Monday, January 30, 2017
Environmental contamination was a great concern during Monday morning fire
Lawrenceburg Now
Going against their very nature, fire officials made the decision Monday morning to allow a fire at a barn filled with hazardous materials to burn itself out rather than risk further contamination of the environment.
“It’s a hard decision to make to not put a fire out,” explained Tyler McDow, Assistant Director of Lawrence County Fire and Rescue. “Unfortunately that’s what we had to do here.”
A total of nine area fire departments answered the 6:45 a.m. call to a barn fire on 
Triple S Lane, off of Mt. Lebanon Road. By the time the first units arrived on the scene, however, the barn was already fully ablaze.
Housed inside were 4,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer 31818, 2,000 gallons of a 32% UAN liquid fertilizer, 200 gallons of diesel fuel, 75 gallons of gasoline, a 200 gallon propane tank that was venting upon their arrival, and some additional propane tanks.
Firefighters were able to help move equipment away from the barn to prevent additional loss, however a couple of calves did perish in the fire. Preliminary estimates put loss at around two million dollars for owner C3 Farms.
McDow said that the decision was made to “go defensive” which means that water was not used to extinguish the blaze. Adding water to the mix would have caused environmental contamination due to runoff.
Luckily Mother Nature cooperated, providing the best possible conditions for such a fire. It allowed the smoke to rise high enough into the atmosphere to maintain a good air quality and eliminate the possibility of evacuations.
Members of the Lawrenceburg Fire Department’s HazMat team responded to monitor air quality and runoff. “Our readings never got to any level of concern whatsoever,” Chief Jay Moore emphasized. “We set up air monitoring close to the scene as well as away from the scene to make sure the residents were protected, and we knew there were no issues. We also had some of the county departments monitoring the Highway 64 Bypass, making sure the smoke carried high above the bypass and above the houses.
“Sometimes with a fire you’re better off to let the situation burn itself out. I think it was a wise decision by the incident commander to let the building go. If we had tried to put it out we would have created more environmental concerns than what we already had…All that water and chemicals are going to run somewhere, so we’re adding to the problem by using water. We elected to just let it burn, because the damage was already done… From our standpoint the county fire departments did an outstanding job with the decisions that were made here.”
McDow said that all of the departments working together were able to keep contamination to a minimum. “Our City of Lawrenceburg’s Hazmat Team set up with air monitors in-hand. They had maps pulled up showing the streams around the area…Those guys were working on what streams would be affected; what areas of population would be affected by it.”
Deputy Director of Lawrenceburg/Lawrence County Emergency Management, Shelton Barnett was on-scene, as well. “The environmental impact is a big concern,” he explained. “We got in contact with the school system just to make them aware of what the potential would be for the smoke making it to any of the schools – which never got anywhere close. I think it was a very, very good job, what the fire departments did to try to limit contamination. They’ve done some outstanding work as far as trying to keep the runoff down to a minimum.”
McDow summed it up, saying, “We definitely hate the loss for the property owners, but the safety of the general public is also our big concern. I think everything worked out today. It’s a bad situation, but it could’ve been much worse.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation at the present time.
