The Fire is Over...The Battle Rages On
IEI Plastics Fire, Parkersburg, WV
Two hundred and four hours. That’s how long it took to put out the fire at the old Ames shovel plant, now owned by IEI Plastics. As of 11:30 Sunday morning, the fire was declared “extinguished”. Now there is a 36 to 48 hour cooling off period before anything further can be done. Firefighters and assorted agencies will remain on site for another couple of days to monitor the scene. What you see left here is now the responsibility of the site owner to clean up.
A lot of disturbing information has surfaced since this fire began. As far back as 2012, two area fire chiefs have written letters that this facility, and its sister site a couple of blocks away, were a disaster waiting to happen. They expressed concern that a fire of epic proportions could easily break out and it would have significant impact on the area due to the nature of the items being stored there. This business identified itself as a plastics recycling facility. Some of the plastics being stored were leftovers from processes at the DuPont plant south of town. Waste plastics were shredded on site, packed in huge cardboard containers, and stacked floor to ceiling. Violations and resulting fines of $80,000 were not corrected, nor paid in full. There are at least four other such storage sites in the surrounding area. And what’s being done about it? Time will tell.
The EPA and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has told us there was nothing alarming in the air quality. The next town south on the Ohio River with city water intake is Huntington. I have not heard what their monitoring has discovered but you know with at least 10,000,000 gallons of water poured on this thing, there had to be significant runoff. The earth below this thing has been permanently altered. Who knows what else lurks in the future.
I remember when I was a kid, my uncle worked at Marbon…a plastics plant in the area. He brought us large samples of the plastics that had come out of the extruder. They looked like a huge pile of toothpaste squeezed out of a giant’s toothpaste tube. I was fascinated. There were also dollops resembling Hershey’s kisses that were soft and springy. We played with these things. Who knows what kind is chemicals we were exposed to as kids? Remember playing with mercury when you were a kid? We rolled it around in the palms of our hands!!! Nowadays, whole buildings are closed in the event of a spill. The world has changed. The world has stayed the same. The world has gotten worse. Depends on your perspective.
Whatever your take is on this, these kinds of fires are catastrophic and preventable. It just takes monitoring and we cannot do that by deregulating and dismantling the agencies that were developed for just that purpose. We’ve become overcome with data, information, sensationalized news as entertainment. It’s hard to know where to start when everything seems so overwhelming. It’s easy to get numb. But…we can’t afford the luxury of that numbness. If you see things that aren’t right…ask questions. Tell the authorities. Make some phone calls. Get involved. Be proactive. Don’t assume the other guy is going to do it for you. ❤️
“Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the ornate robe she was wearing. She put her hands on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went.” 2 Samuel 13:19 NIV