Upon beginning their work shift at 5:30 am, 2 employees detected a fire in a semitrailer filled with 26.58 tonnes of household waste and non-recyclables stemming from various material sorting centres (15.88 tonnes of household waste, 0.92 tonnes of pre-sorted recycling rejects; 9.78 tonnes of sorted recycling rejects) and onsite transit since 13th July, i.e. over a 41-hour period. The fire produced thick black smoke that did not however interfere with traffic on the nearby RD6 departmental highway.
Fire-fighters arrived on the scene at 6 am with 2 pump fire engines and a tanker lorry. A neighbouring company lent a power shovel in order to remove the debris accumulated during the extinction effort. After emptying their reserve supplies, the emergency crews replenished their cistern on a fire hydrant located 1 km away. They decided not to use either the site’s lagoon, which would have necessitated introducing another type of vehicle, or the adjacent fire hydrant, which would have required cutting drinking supply to the town of Nuzéjouls. Fire-fighters successfully contained the fire to the 260-m2 transfer platform. The platform’s metal structure was deformed; moreover, the various equipment as well as the lorry were destroyed.
The capacity of the site’s hydrocarbon separator (3,000-litre capacity) only allowed holding the 10,000 litres of fire extinction water. The overflow was channelled to the lagoon within the business park prior to treatment at the plant and discharge into the VERT River. The cause of this fire could not be identified with precision.
The operator had not respected either the maximum authorised quantity of 23 tonnes of wastes in the skip or the maximum amount of time transiting wastes could be held, counting holidays, set at 24 hours. Previous anomalies had been observed 8 months prior and had still not been rectified since that time: maximum quantity of wastes, maximum transit time, lack of a fence, and planting of a backup hedgerow. The operator had been required to: bring these points into compliance, revise the organisational part of its response procedure in coordination with emergency services, verify the resistance of transfer platform concrete, and dispose of wastes (scrap vehicles) at a certified centre.
