MULCH FIRE SMOLDERS
Second incident at mulch yard not expected to lead to penalties.
Towering piles of leaves and debris smoldered in the spring sunshine Tuesday as heavy-equipment operators and Memphis firefighters worked to extinguish a stubborn blaze that began two days earlier at the Jones Mulch Co. wood recycling facility near Summer and Interstate 40.
But despite the outbreak of the second fire in six months at the site, there are no imminent plans to fine or otherwise penalize the company, local fire and health officials say. There has been no excessive air pollution, and unless further inspections after the blaze show code violations, officials likely will not take any enforcement action against the mulch firm.
Although the exact causes of the latest fire are uncertain, it appears to be accidental, said Lt. Wayne Cooke, public information officer for the Memphis Fire Department. The blaze was called in at 5:47 p.m. Sunday.
“What we do know is that mulch, when it decomposes, generates heat. Sometimes that heat is enormous,” Cooke said.
Jeff Jones, co-owner of the company, said high winds reaching 25-30 mph over the weekend triggered the fire in a pile of mulch. The company had been carefully checking the material with a special mulch thermometer.
“The pile wasn’t hot ...,” Jones said. “(But) whenever we get a lot of wind like that, it pushes the heat to the outside.”
By late afternoon Tuesday, the blaze appeared to have been extinguished, Jones said.
The fire hasn’t created extraordinary expenses for the Fire Department, Cooke said. As of midday Tuesday, nine pieces of equipment and 33 firefighters were on the scene. The crews had been rotated from stations across the city.
“There’s no overtime. This is on-duty personnel ...,” Cooke said. “We’re not calling anyone in to cover this.”
Once the blaze has been extinguished and is not a threat to reignite, officials from the Fire Prevention Bureau will inspect the mulch company to determine if there are code violations, Cooke said. Codes specify, among other things, the maximum height of piles and how close they can be to other material.
If inspectors find violations, the company will be given a timetable to correct them. The firm would face citations and possible court summons if the problems weren’t fixed.
The Jones facility also was the scene of a fire in October, when pallets ignited. A later inspection found no violations, Cooke said.
Tyler Zerwekh, administrator of environmental health for the Shelby County Health Department, said that as of Monday air-quality monitoring stations had not detected any violations of federal standards for particulate pollution, including the microscopic soot that can lodge deeply in the lungs. The station nearest the Jones facility is about 1.5 miles east-southeast, he said.
Zerwekh said there are ordinances regarding open burning in the city and county. Department officials will inspect the mulch yard to determine if negligence by the company contributed to the fire, he said.