Around 3 am, on the 2nd floor of a 1,000-m² facility specialised in the cooking and packaging of shrimp sold as a frozen food for retail outlets, a fire that broke out on a stockpile of polystyrene boxes released thick black smoke. A temp employee sounded the alarm and immediately shut off the gas feed line to the cooking appliance; then, two technicians who had arrived two hours prior to restart service on the site’s two production chains, along with nine other employees who had begun their shift 15 min earlier, evacuated the premises.
Emergency services were at the scene when around 3:30 am a flashover ignited the entire building, causing the structure to collapse. Blasted onto the ground floor, one of the two fire-fighters trying to contain the fire with a nozzle was killed; his body was found under the rubble 45 min later thanks to a search device installed using a dog handler and thermal camera. The second fire-fighter was burned on the face but managed to escape. A medical-psychological emergency unit treated the three other fire-fighters, all of whom were in a state of shock.
It was feared that the flames would spread to a nearby storage zone containing nitrogen bottles. This intervention mission mobilised a total of 60 fire-fighters and lasted several hours. The emergency team shut off the refrigeration installation circuit, which was being supplied by a tank containing 1 tonne of chlorine-fluorine refrigerant, then successfully brought the blaze under control around 7 am using six nozzles, one of which was mounted on a ladder. A specialised subcontractor pumped the chlorine-saturated water that had covered some 150 m² of basement area up to a depth of 50 cm. The building was destroyed and 30 employees faced possible redundancy.
The plant, founded in 1991, was undergoing expansion (500 m² / €600,000 of capital investment), with the works slated for completion in May 2010. The operator had planned on upgrading alarms to meet code requirements once the expansion project was terminated. According to the Head of Maintenance, the premises used to store cardboard packaging and pallets of polystyrene boxes had not been fitted with a smoke detector.
The plant was rebuilt and was able to resume operations less than a year later. Its basement was retained, but with a single ground floor of 3,200 m², the packaging area being isolated by a fire wall. Hoppers were removed. Sandwich panels were again used, but with less combustible mass (fewer partitions). The electrical installation also underwent special adjustments: electrical equipment was removed from the panels, and the panels were crossed in compliance with current standards. Finally, polystyrene packaging has been replaced by polypropylene.
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