A fire broke out at around 10:30 am, in a 2,500 m² building housing the paper and cardboard press at a waste sorting centre. An employee had noticed flames on the press’ enclosed conveyor system. He stopped the machine and notified the site manager, who called the fire brigade. The employees at the site opened the building’s smoke control hatches and attempted to extinguish the fire with fire hoses. Upon arrival at the site, the fire brigade triggered the manual fire alarm and evacuated the 21 employees for the duration of the intervention. They were able to bring the fire under control at around noon using 2 fire hoses. The presence of the enclosure around the conveyor delayed extinguishing of the fire. The firemen had to turn the press back on in order to be able to expel the burning waste from the machine and extinguish it.

Consequences

No injuries were reported. The 3 m³ of burned paper waste (office archives to be destroyed) was sent to an incinerator.

The press suffered damage to sensors and electrical wiring; paper and cardboard processing operators had to be stopped for a few days. The waste at the site was then transferred to other sorting platforms.

The extinguishing water (3 m³) was confined to the site’s retention basin and was processed by a specialised company.

Causal analysis

The fire started in the baling press’ conveyor belt, which is designed to convey the previously shredded paper before being compressed. The day of the accident was scorching. According to the operator, the fire must have been started by a spark in the shredder due to a metallic element among the archive documents (folders with metal claps were present among the archives being processed). The operator indicated that there was no sorting operation of the office archives conducted prior to shredding.

The accumulation of dust on the conveyor enclosure also contributed to the magnitude of the fire (ignition of dust).

The Inspection authorities for classified facilities asked the operator to:

• establish an emergency situation management procedure;
• ensure that the shredder model is capable of processing metal objects.

The operator also plans to:

• improve the instructions for initiating the fire alarm;
• train new agents in the use of fire hoses;
• modify the conveyor enclosure in order to be able to intervene more quickly in the event of a fire.