Gilroy
– Gilroy and county firefighters spent five hours fighting a
blaze at Gilroy Foods Sunday – the fifth fire at the garlic and
onion processing plant since Aug. 23. This year, Gilroy
firefighters responded to four of those fires and 14 false alarms,
according to department data, but the city has
no plans at this point to charge the garlic producer for
emergency responses.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Gilroy and county firefighters spent five hours fighting a blaze at Gilroy Foods Sunday – the fifth fire at the garlic and onion processing plant since Aug. 23. This year, Gilroy firefighters responded to four of those fires and 14 false alarms, according to department data, but the city has no plans at this point to charge the garlic producer for emergency responses.
Fire crews responded at 9:38am Sunday to a fire in a garlic dryer and took until 2:30pm to put out the challenging flames, said Ed Bozzo, Gilroy Fire Department division chief.
“The amount of product in there was extremely difficult to extinguish,” he explained.
Bozzo estimated the cost of the damage to the dehydrated product inside the dryer at $12,000.
“(The fire) was confined to one dryer,” said Bob McKeon, spokesman for ConAgra Foods, which owns Gilroy Foods. The dryer will require minor repairs, McKeon said, but will not affect production this late in the season.
The cause of the fire – the fifth in less than three months – remained unclear Wednesday.
Crews from CDF/South Santa Clara County Fire District and Santa Clara County Fire Department also responded to the two-alarm fire, for a total of eight engines on scene, Bozzo said. San Jose Fire Department dispatched an engine to cover the city in the meantime, as per policy in fires that go to a second alarm and occupy Gilroy personnel.
Including Sunday’s fire, the department responded to four of five actual fires at the Gilroy Foods plant this year, the first occurring on Aug. 23. The fifth was extinguished by the plants fire protection system. All started and were contained in the plant’s dryers that process garlic, onion, or both products.
“Given the process that they do out there – which is dehydration and using high heat – it’s not unusual,” said Division Chief Clay Bentson.
Bozzo could not provide any kind of cost estimate associated with the city’s response to the fires.
“It’s like any other fire – that’s what tax dollars go for,” he said.
“It’s almost a yearly thing because of the process involved in drying the product,” he said.
Gilroy Foods also has issued a number of alarms that turned out to be false this year. The GFD responded to false alarms at the plant 14 times since Jan. 1, according to department statistics.
“That could be anything from them working on the system to sprinkler head breakage triggering an alarm,” Bentson said.
In those cases, one GFD engine is dispatched unless further details suggest there is a fire, in which case it goes to a first alarm.
The department could have charged Gilroy Foods $2,420 for this year’s false alarms. A city ordinance allows the fire department to assess a fee after repeated false alarms, according to Fire Marshall Jackie Bretschneider. The fee is $220 per call after the third false alarm in a calendar year.
“The fire department has to file paperwork to assess the fee, and to my knowledge, they haven’t done so in a number of years,” Bretschneider said.
The ordinance also applies to burglar alarms and could apply to hazardous materials alarm systems.
McKeon and Bozzo said they were not aware of the specifics of the ordinance, or any fines imposed on Gilroy Foods.
Three of the five fires this year were caused by unrelated mechanical malfunctions, McKeon said.
A broken fan blade created sparks which ignited dehydrating onions on Aug. 23. In another case, a crack in a firewall box allowed product to ignite. In a third, a roller was out of alignment, causing the product being dried to overheat and ignite. A fourth fire was caused by ignition of residual product in a dryer, he said, while Sunday’s fire is still being reviewed.
None of the fires significantly damaged the dryers in which they started: Two – including Sunday’s – caused minor damage, and three caused no damage, other than to the garlic or onion inside the dryer.
“Three were extinguished by the plant’s own fire protection system, before the fire department arrived,” McKeon said.
A representative with the California Department of Forestry/South Santa Clara County Fire District could not say how many times the agency responded to Gilroy Foods this year, while the Santa Clara County Fire Department, which covers Morgan Hill, responded twice, on Aug. 23 and Sunday, Nov. 14.
GFD calls a CDF/South County engine for any first alarm assignment, Bozzo said.
McKeon reiterated that Gilroy Foods is working with the fire department to look into the cause of Sunday’s fire to prevent similar incidents in the future, and that safety is a first priority.
“Any time there’s an incident, then there’s a review and assessment the company takes,” he said. “Steps have been taken to prevent the same problems from occurring.”
