Fire!

Last week I drove down to the office and was blocked from turning down the street and parking.  Fire trucks were down the road next to our building, so I parked and walked. 

Our building is on the left side and you can see the fire trucks parked in the street in front of the building next door.

The trucks from across the street.  The building that had the fire is the one with the red roof.  Ours is partially seen on the left.

The company recycles oil and sometime in the early morning a fire started in one of their tanks.  We were asked to consider evacuating due to poor air quality, but we were able to stay until 10 AM when the fire department ordered an evacuation because they couldn't stop the fire from starting up over and over again.  We had to send all employees home, stop all deliveries and pick-ups and forward the phone calls to our house.  We left not knowing what to expect!

 The EPA, other agencies and HAZMAT participated in the event which the firefighters called a "major event."  The water used to put out the fire contaminated lots of ground and ended up in a holding pond and the drainage system.  All of it was considered hazardous so special protection had to be used including the ground covers.

 It extended all the way down past our building (on right here)

 and into our parking lot.

 The workers had to walk down the pathway into this tent where all of their equipment had to be disposed of  including $1600 firefighter protective gear from each firefighter!

 They had to shower off in this red trailer.  This is our primary parking lot.

 Trucks were parked in the secondary parking lot.

 This is the area between our building on the left and the one on the right that had the fire.  Firetrucks and lots of equipment here.

 The view of our freshly cut grass from the affected property.

We were allowed to return the next day but the company next door has lots of clean up ahead.  Our building seems to be unaffected since the fire didn't extend to outside.  We were lucky!