JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – After battling an enormous fire at a recycling facility in Jacksonville’s Northside for over 24 hours, Jacksonville’s Fire and Rescue Department says it hopes to extinguish the flames by Thursday.
The agency adds that the flames have “died down a lot” and the area has no air quality concerns.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: JFRD continues to battle massive fire at Northside recycling facility
“We’re not completely done yet,” said JFRD Public Information Officer Eric Prosswimmer. “I’ll say, we’ll be done with the heavy equipment team by dark [Wednesday] night. Sit with it throughout the night, but for all intents and purposes it will be out.”
The fire at Atlantic Can Inc., located at the southeast corner of the I-295 junction with Main Street, sparked early Tuesday morning.
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.
Sasha Mincey and Talisa Orange say they saw the events unfold from an apartment complex about two miles away from the recycling facility.
“It was scary,” Mincey said. “The fireballs were flying into the air, something was feeding it, and it was not going away any time soon. It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
Orange reiterated Mincey’s fears, saying, “Smoke was everywhere, and I’ve never seen a fire like that in person.”
JFRD Chief Keith Powers said Tuesday evening that the heavy equipment team would continue to work for a couple of hours and then shut operations down to give them a break, citing safety concerns.
“The ladder pipes will stay up throughout the night and continue to cool the hot spots,” Powers said.
Powers added that the heavy equipment crew planned to resume their efforts on Wednesday morning and hoped to have the “majority” of the fire extinguished by Wednesday evening.
The facility that caught on fire recycles construction products and provides waste tire removal, demolition, and other recycling services. Prosswimmer explained why crews were having such a difficult time putting the fire out, saying that because tires burn hot, extinguishing the flames can pose plenty of challenges.
“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.”