On a Saturday at around 11:00 a.m., a fire broke out in a sorting plant on the enclosed conveyor belt between the paper shredder and the baler. Employees managed to bring the fire under control using fire extinguishers and firefighting equipment. The fire had generated white smoke owing to the reaction between the extinguishing water and the burning paper. The firemen had been able to completely extinguish the fire. Reinforced monitoring of the site was scheduled over the weekend. The firefighting water (a very small quantity) remained contained inside the conveyor system.

The site had been in operation at the time of the accident even though it was a Saturday, owing to a temporary increase in activity. The employees had been in the process of shredding archives and pushing the material into the enclosed conveyor belt with a loader. A piece of metal contained in the archives, having come into contact with the shredder knives, may have been the cause of the fire. According to the operator, it is possible that visual inspection of the waste before entering the shredder may have been insufficient on that day (the metal pieces of the “binder” within the paper). Fires of similar origin have already occurred in the past at other sorting centres (ARIA 48524, 48527, 51471).

During the fire, a fire door had not been closed properly and the smoke extraction hatches did not open. An assessment of the emergency equipment was performed and the supplier was called to intervene on the 3 fire doors. Servo-controlled manual releases are to be added to the system. The operator also installed an automatic sprinkler system for the press and the shredder.