At 5:45 pm on a wrecking yard specialised in recovering rebar, an employee noticed a smouldering fire while removing a pile of smashed vehicles using a crane. Fed by oxygen in the air, the fire quickly intensified. Employees notified the local fire-fighters and began battling the blaze with water and foam extinguishers. In spite of their efforts, the fire spread to a 1,600-m³ (i.e. 100 to 150 tonne) stockpile of wrecked cars that had been arranged into cubes ready for shipping to a crushing facility in Spain. The fire generated heavy black smoke visible 30 km around and pushed by the wind towards nearby residences and orchards.

Fire-fighters deployed 6 nozzles. Since the fire hydrants located adjacent to the site did not offer a sufficient flow rate, it was decided to cut off water supply for neighbours. Road traffic was suspended in order to facilitate the deployment of fire nozzles. During the intervention, a fire-fighter fell and fractured his wrist; he was transported to the Montauban Hospital. The fire was extinguished around midnight; 400 m³ of water were ultimately used to douse this blaze. A portion of the extinction water was recovered in the site’s hydrocarbon separators, but the remainder flowed into a ditch. Moreover, a few trees were scorched at the boundary of the yard.

Polluted water from the ditch was pumped and treated by a specialised subcontractor and the manual extinction water trapped by manually closing valves on the site’s scrubbers was analysed. The operator restored the ditch to its original condition (by scouring / cleaning).

Classified facilities inspectors visited the site the next day. They requested that the operator: revise the available water capacity in the event of fire outbreak (by allocating sufficient volumes onsite, in coordination with emergency services); leave room between the various storage facilities and property boundaries in order to limit the risks of spreading and facilitate fire-fighter access; and respect the maximum storage height stipulated in the prefectural order. The operator agreed to study the design of an extinction water retention basin.

The cause of this accident could not be identified with certainty. One possibility called for heating of the stored material as a result of a heat source or short-circuit that would have been caused by a battery remaining onsite.