Inside a packaging and insulation materials plant supplying the construction industry, a fire broke out around 4 pm in a 200-m² storage room warehousing some 400 m³ (i.e. 8 tonnes) of polyethylene foam rolls. The alarm was sounded by an employee who happened to be in the vicinity of the building and noticed smoke emanating from the room. His supervisor called external emergency services. Fire-fighters dispatched from several stations battled the blaze from above after the roof collapsed and were able to contain the fire to just this one building. The fire was eventually extinguished around 7 pm using 3 nozzles, one of which was mounted on a ladder. During this intervention, a safety perimeter was installed and rail traffic on the Paris-Marseille line was suspended.
The storage room and inventory of foam were destroyed. No soil pollution was observed; it seemed that the fire extinction water had, for the most part, vaporised. The massive intervention of external emergency service resources allowed preventing any fire spreading via domino effect to the other storage facilities in the immediate vicinity.
The causes of this fire remained unknown: the room had not been equipped with a heating system and instead simply featured four neon lights placed on a ramp. Malicious intent was not to be excluded, as a previous fire on 4th March had already been started in a workshop, and moreover a burglary with forced entry had been reported over the weekend preceding this fire. When assessing all these facts, a police investigation was ordered. Material sampling by forklift could only be performed in this shop from time to time depending on the needs of the transformation workshop (production of bags, other packaging, etc.). An internal investigation was also undertaken in order to verify whether material movements were being conducted on the day of the incident.
No injuries were reported; the workforce of 45 employees were not made redundant. The electricity outage was initiated deliberately within the sector without affecting the rate of production. No environmental consequences were observed. Residue from the charred building frame and roof structure had to be evacuated; it was also planned to demolish the building whose load-bearing walls had been compromised by the fire. The value of inventory destroyed was estimated at between €25,000 and €30,000.
The classified facilities inspectorate performed a spot inspection the next day; it requested the operator to submit a report on the accident, containing an analysis of its causes and consequences. An inspection of the waste stockpile indicated the presence of waste in quantities far exceeding what had been foreseen in the fire planning scenario. The classified facilities inspectorate requested the operator to either revise the design calculation or quickly return to the maximum surface area initially planned for this storage facility. The inspection also highlighted the presence of both full and empty gas canisters used by the plant’s forklifts and stored at the periphery of the site. Given the suspicion of malicious intent, the operator was asked to consider a less visible storage location.
