JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Fifteen hours into battling a massive fire at a Northside recycling facility, the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department said its heavy equipment team was still tackling the burning rubbish pile made mostly of ground-up tires.
The fire at Atlantic Can Inc., which is on the southeast corner of the I-295 junction with Main Street, sparked sometime around midnight, and at noon, JFRD Chief Keith Powers shared an update on their progress.
The facility recycles construction products and provides waste tire removal, demolition and other recycling services.
Powers explained that the area that was burning was a rubbish pile about 200 feet by 300 feet (a bit larger than a football field), and when the fire started it was 30 feet high.
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By noon, the pile had burned down significantly but was still so thick that the department opted to call in its heavy equipment team to start dismantling the pile.
Powers said Tuesday evening that the heavy equipment team would continue to work for a couple of hours and then they would shut it down to give them a break for safety reasons.
“The ladder pipes will stay up throughout the night and continue to cool the hot spots,” Powers said.
Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department Capt. Eric Prosswimmer explained that because tires burn hot, they can be very difficult to extinguish.
“When this rubber gets going, it’s very difficult to put out. You can put copious amounts of water on it, but it burns deep and it retains that heat,” Prosswimmer said. “It burns very hot and produces a lot of dark black smoke so anybody driving by who sees dark black smoke, that’s what it is.”
That smoke is definitely a concern for those living nearby.
“The issue that we’re dealing with right now is that we’ve been very fortunate with the winds. It’s not a very windy day,” Prosswimmer said, adding that no evacuations are planned at this time. “If the wind shifts, that’s another matter that we want to deal with. This isn’t smoke that you want to inhale.”
Adam Johnson was working in a neighborhood near Oceanway Elementary School early Tuesday morning, and parts of that neighborhood were covered in smog.
“I will [feel it] eventually, because I have asthma, so later on tonight, I’ll have to end up taking medicine for that,” Johnson said.
WATCH: Press play below to see Prosswimmer’s full live interview on The Morning Show
Powers said JFRD is trying to keep crews out of the toxic smoke, even with the equipment they have, and they have a crew on the north side of the fire, where the smoke is billowing, keeping an eye on air quality.
He said residents nearby could be told to shelter in place if the air quality gets too bad, but as of the 6 p.m. update, that is not necessary.
“So we’re still in a good place with that. I will say that if somebody has, you know, asthma or any kind of allergies or whatever, if the smoke plume starts coming around, your residue, just shelter inside,” Powers said.
“Well, I’m wearing a mask, and this is the first time I’ve worn a mask since COVID. This smoke is really bad. It’s strong,” Essie Murray said.
Andrianna Pierson said she was caught off guard by the air quality.
“It’s pretty hard to breathe right now,” Pierson said. “I wasn’t expecting this. I was surprised. I almost came back to my car to get a mask.
A woman who saw the property go up in flames from her apartment complex just down the road described the scary moments to News4JAX.
“At first it was large, and I thought it was a little odd to see a burn not in a rural area but in the city,” Sasha Mincey said. “And then within 10 to 20 minutes, it went times five in size. It was scary. The fireballs were flying into the air, something was feeding it, it was not going away any time soon. It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
Powers explained that because the fire is so large, the heavy equipment team will come in and take off a layer at a time, spreading it out over an area that can be thoroughly wetted down, and then do the same with the next layer.
The process could take hours more, Powers warned.
Another issue on the property was that there were no fire hydrants near the facility, so crews had to shuttle water from a nearby apartment complex and other areas. They had five tankers on scene overnight and were also drafting water from a lake on the property, Prosswimmer said.
“It’s manpower intensive because we’ve got people doing a lot of stuff. They’re spread out. They’re taking care of the water situation,” Prosswimmer said.
Powers said JFRD asked JEA to bump up the water pressure in the area and that helped firefighters get a better handle on the fire.
Prosswimmer said a large tractor and generators on the property have also been destroyed.
“Every time we turn the water back off, it tends to flare back up because of the heat that’s emitted,” Prosswimmer said.
Powers said the heavy equipment crew will resume their efforts in the morning and hope to have the “majority” of the fire extinguished by Wednesday evening.
“We’re blessed to have a city council in a mayor’s office that supports what we need and has staffed up this heavy equipment team that we have. Without them, we’d probably be here for a week, but because they’re able to get into that pile with that heavy equipment and start and start raking it back and cooling it down, I think we’re probably going to be done by tomorrow,” Powers said.