Gilroy
– Plumes of smoke rose Monday evening from the city’s largest
private employer, the Gilroy Foods plant, as a fire broke out over
an onion dryer.
Plant Manager Bob Cates, reporting from the scene at about
8:30pm Monday, said the fire was minor and only temporarily delayed
the plant’s operations.
Gilroy – Plumes of smoke rose Monday evening from the city’s largest private employer, the Gilroy Foods plant, as a fire broke out over an onion dryer.
Plant Manager Bob Cates, reporting from the scene at about 8:30pm Monday, said the fire was minor and only temporarily delayed the plant’s operations. The fire damaged a portion of the plant’s roof, but Cates said this roof is over an inactive part of the plant.
“There’s no damage to any of the equipment inside,” Cates said. “As soon as the fire department gets off the roof, we’re going to start right back up again.”
Gilroy Fire Department Division Chief Phil King, however, said a city building inspector would have to give a report on the roof’s structural integrity before that drying unit can operate again. The inspector was on the scene at 9:30pm.
After a brief evacuation because of smoke, employees in other parts of the plant resumed work while firefighters mopped up, Cates said.
The fire started among onion skins in the dryer’s exhaust flue, according to Cates and King. As happens occasionally, Cates said, a fire began to smolder in one of the dryers. Staff extinguished it and “went about their business,” he added. In this case, however, some embers appear to have blown up the exhaust flue and lit onion skins collected in a wire-mesh catch-basket at the end.
From there, the wind blew the fire to the roof.
The GFD got the call at 7:16pm and quickly called a second alarm. They arrived at 7:21 and contained the fire by 8:38, King said. Crews from the California Department of Forestry/South County Fire District and the Santa Clara County Fire Department assisted.
Some firefighters hosed the blaze from below, inside the flue, while others did so from the roof.
“Access was difficult because they had to go up through the dryer, at angles, … plus you had a structure fire up top,” King said.
Plant officials plan to assess the repair costs today, according to Cates.
“It doesn’t appear to be too bad, maybe some of the tar on the roof,” he said.
Cates said this is the first roof fire he can remember at the plant in the 18 years he has been on staff. He said plant officials will look into how such fires might be prevented in the future.
The Gilroy Fire Department’s quick action had a lot to do with keeping the fire small, he added.
The 45-year-old plant, which in addition to onions produces about 20 percent of the nation’s dehydrated garlic, is owned by international corporation ConAgra Foods. It is located about a mile east of U.S. Highway 101 at 1350 Pacheco Pass Highway. It employs about 550 people.
The GFD used its aerial ladder truck to access the roof, a vehicle King said hadn’t been needed for several months before an Aug. 3 fire at a Luchessa Avenue shipping yard. Need for the vehicle is limited since Gilroy has few buildings over two stories; its tallest is the four-story Hilton Garden Inn.
