Sugar mill fire keeps firefighters busy for more than a week
KOMATIPOORT - After more than a week, facing blistering heat and a fire that just did not want to budge, firemen were finally able to put out the blaze at Komatipoort Sugar Mill.
The storage warehouse of the facility caught fire on Tuesday October 5 at 02:00, and for the next nine days the flames were fought until they were completely extinguished on Thursday October 14 at 21:00.
In the early stages of the fire, the Nkomazi and Mbombela fire departments had it under control on the same day it started. “The blaze spread from the warehouse through the conveyor belt, but we stopped it from reaching the rest of the factory at 05:00,” said Gibson Sibambo of the local fire department’s senior personnel. On Sunday October 10, the blaze flared up again, and the firefighters battled it until Thursday.
The Lowveld and Escarpment
Fire Protection Association (Lefpa) arrived at the mill on Monday October 11 to provide aid. André Scheepers, the manager of Lefpa, was the coordinator. A Sikorsky UH60 Black Hawk helicopter of Leading Edge Aviation was contracted by the association to drop thousands of litres of water onto the fire.
For three days, the helicopter dropped more than 550 loads onto the storage warehouse, with one load consisting of 2 500 litres. On Wednesday, Frits Koekemoer of Nkomazi Security Solutions was invited to structure a new strategy with Scheepers, and a new operational plan was developed.
“The helicopter dropped a near total of 1.4m litres of water onto the warehouse fire, and we do not know the total number of litres that were used by the ground troops to completely extinguish it,” said Scheepers.
According to Stephen Heath, the corporate affairs director of RCL Foods, 41 000 tonnes of sugar were burned in the fire and the sugar cane had to be diverted to Malalane as the harvesting had to be adjusted accordingly.
“It is important to note that the sugar warehouse was constructed to supply raw sugar to the Malalane refinery, and as such is not integral to the Komati milling operations. This in turn has informed management’s approach to mitigate further risk and minimise business interruption, with the key objective of bringing the mill back into full operation as soon as possible,” said Heath.