Industrial fire damage not finalized
by DAVID F. SHERMAN Managing Editor

Total damage figures are still incomplete from a Thanksgiving Day fire at a sprawling Amherst ceramics manufacturing facility.

Ellicott Creek firefighters responded to an automatic fire alarm at 11:07 last Thursday morning at Saint-Gobain Corp., 168 Creekside Drive. Employees reported there was a fire in the building's product furnace area.

Each of the small furnaces operate at more than 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit, Chief Peter Calandra said.

There are several round, 8-foot diameter furnaces located in a room measuring about 40 by 60 feet.

"It's just speculation for now, but we think one of the furnaces had a catastrophic failure that generated enough heat to set off a heat detector," he said. "That release caused one or two sprinkler heads to activate."

While water from the sprinklers quickly contained the fire, it combined with the other furnaces in the area, creating clouds of super heated steam.

Like dominos, the other furnaces began generating their own heat and steam. Calandra estimated that 38 of the 54 sprinkler heads in the area were activated.

Crews were hampered by the fact that water could not be sprayed directly inside a furnace because a possible explosion could result.

High-expansion foam was used in the two-hour effort to cool the contents. There was virtually no damage to the structure itself, except for some insulation at the ceiling level.

Calandra said the exact cause of the malfunction is still under investigation.

"It blew a 100-pound lid off the furnace. It landed on an overhead catwalk," he said.

The hazardous materials unit from the Brighton Fire Company in the Town of Tonawanda was called in to monitor runoff and other conditions for possible contamination.

Firefighters who entered the building to examine a chemical storage area were given the standard decontamination treatment as a precaution.

As part of the second alarm assignment, Getzville and North Amherst provided manpower and equipment at the scene. North Bailey covered calls in the Ellicott Creek district during the incident.

As of Monday afternoon, there was no dollar amount of the damage caused by the fire, although Calandra said it would be "very extensive."

Crews remained at the scene until approximately 2:30 p.m.

Saint-Gobain operates in more than 50 countries worldwide, and is listed as one of the world's 100 leading industrial corporations. It has a workforce of more than 200,000 in 50 countries.

Saint-Gobain came to the United States in 1967, opening a plant in Valley Forge, Pa.