High-tech textile plant catches fire
Boukaert Industrial Textiles facility on Privilege Street is hit by four-alarm fire; cutting-edge machinery put out of service
WOONSOCKET – One firefighter from Lincoln suffered a minor injury as multiple departments from the Greater Woonsocket area responded to a four-alarm fire Monday at Boukaert Industrial Textiles, located at 1 Privilege St.
About half of BIT’s workforce of 32 were on the job at the food-insulation manufacturing plant when some heard a “boom” and the cavernous building began filling up with smoke, at about 10:30 a.m., Woonsocket Fire Chief Paul Shatraw later told reporters. Other than the Lincoln firefighter, who was released after being treated at a hospital for an undisclosed medical issue, there were no other injuries.
With no flames showing from the exterior of the building and little smoke, Shatraw said the WFD struck multiple alarms because of the complexity of the fire and the workplace. The centerpiece of the manufacturing site is a $3.2 million piece of textile processing equipment, with a vast system of associated ductwork. When firefighters arrived, he said, they found smoke in the “oven” of the processing machine, known as an air-lay, as well as the air ducts.
“This was a tricky fire for us,” said Shatraw. “We struck multiple alarms because of the size and complexity of the building.”
A division of The Brickle Group – the last of the city’s big textile manufacturers – BIT’s main facility is located on Singled ton Street. It opened the Privilege Street annex just over a year ago amid much fanfare, including a visit from Gov. Gina Raimondo as the company showed off the new air-lay.
BIT Vice President and founder Tom Boukaert, looking exhausted and disheartened at the scene of d the fire, said the air-lay machine cost about $3.2 million and was imported from Italy and France. f Hours after the fire, he said it’s unclear how extensively the airlaw was damaged or whether it’s d even salvageable.
A few of the workers the Privilege Street site are temps, Boud kaert said, but it’s quite likely the facility will be closed for the foreseeable future and some of the workers would be laid off.
“Quite a few of them will be,” he said. “I’ll re-purpose some of them at the plant on Singleton Street.”
At the Privilege Street site, BIT occupied about 30,000 square feet of a large shipping terminal it shared with St. Germain Trucking, the owner of the property. Boukaert said the facility’s main purpose was manufacturing natural cotton and jute fiber into packaging insulation for the food industry, including companies like Blue Apron, that ship fresh ingredients for specific recipes.
The chief said about 14 workers were on duty when the fire was reported. He said investigators have learned that most of them heard what they described as “a boom” in part of the air-lay known as an oven before the workplace began filling with smoke.
“We did have initial reports of that,” said Shatraw. “There were eight to 10 people in that particular area where that boom was heard.”
Shatraw said the cause of the fire remains under investigation by the WFD and the state Fire Marshal’s Office. He said it will likely be necessary for investigators to dismantle the ductwork in order to zero-in on a cause of the fire – a process expected to continue today.
The fire chief said the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) are also involved in the investigation.
A “decontamination facility” was set up at the perimeter of the site, near the junction of Privilege and Pond streets, where firefighters showered off before returning to their home stations. Shatraw said the decontamination procedure was merely precautionary, due to the industrial setting of the fire.
At least 40 firefighters from several area fire departments were summoned to the BIT facility, bringing engines and ladders from the Lime Rock Fire District, the Cumberland Fire Department, the Albion Fire Department, the Central Falls Fire Department. The Providence Fire Department canteen truck also responded.
But the showpiece may have been “Big Tempest,” an industrial-size, truck-mounted ventilator – essentially an immense fan – that arrived at the scene, courtesy of the Sutton, Mass., fire department. Shatraw said Sutton’s Big Tempest is one of the only machines of its kind available in the area – and just what was needed to suck the smoke out of BIT’s sprawling manufacturing area.
The device was mounted on the back of a red Sutton Fire Department pickup truck, which backed into an open bay door at the loading dock of the facility, and it roared like a jet engine as it pulled air out of the building.
“That thing can move some air,” one firefighter remarked admiringly as he watched from a distance.