Crews fight blaze at Mitchell Island scrapyard
There were no injuries or building damage following a huge fire Friday at an auto scrapyard on Mitchell Island that sent huge plumes of black smoke into the sky.
Richmond Fire Rescue spokesman Brian MacLeod confirmed the fire was in the 13000-block Mitchell Road and said it was first called in as a car fire around 11:30 a.m.
The fire was later determined to have started at the bottom of a pile of scrapped vehicles at a car-recycling facility, though it remains unclear exactly what started the fire.
“These cars are processed cars ... which means they’ve been drained of oil and gas,” said MacLeod, who said there was up to 25 cars on fire at one point. Once the fire was contained, machinery was used to dismantle the pile of cars to ensure all sparks were out and to begin an in- vestigation into the cause of the fire.
There were seven trucks and up to 26 firefighters at the scene of the fire on Friday, said MacLeod.
There were no injuries reported and there has been no damage to nearby buildings on the property. All employees of the recycling facility were safely evacuated.
“Right now, we’re just working on environmental concerns because this is a scrapyard, there is oil and gas residual from all the water we’ve pumped in,” said MacLeod.
“So we’ve closed off all the sewers and ditches here and we’re working on pumping out all the oil and gas that is floating on top.”
Earlier in the day, dark smoke from the blaze could be seen from kilometres around, and even from as far as away as parts of Burnaby and downtown Vancouver.