\u00a0massive fire broke out at a recycling plant\u00a0<\/a>near downtown Jacksonville, filling the evening sky with thick smoke and prompting a large emergency response.<\/p>\nJacksonville Fire Rescue says the fire started around 4:15 p.m. Monday inside the main production building at the Smurfit WestRock recycling plant on West Beaver Street.<\/p>\n
More than 60 firefighters responded to the scene as crews worked to contain flames fueled by paper products inside the facility.<\/p>\n
Fire officials say multiple ladder trucks were used during the response, with each truck pumping more than 1,000 gallons of water per minute to battle the blaze.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest challenge was water pressure. Once we put such a high demand on the system, the pressure drops,” said JFRD District Chief Aaron Bebernitz. “Fortunately, with our partners within JEA, they automatically responded and boosted water pressure to the area, so that was one of the tremendous assets that we were able to do.”<\/p>\n
Bebernitz says the size of the plant and windy conditions added to the difficulty of containment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plant is over 12,000 square feet, so being able to contain that and keep the debris from spreading with the high winds or some of the challenges that they face.”<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, JFRD crews remained on scene for fire watch to ensure the fire does not reignite.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though the fires are not burning at this time, it\u2019s just a little bit of wind and a little bit of heat, and it can reignite that quick\u201d said Bebernitz<\/p>\n
Workers have since returned to the plant, moving burned paper materials and working to protect unburned product. Fire officials say crews were especially concerned about preventing flames from reaching batteries stored at the facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the fire did get to the batteries, especially with lithium-ion batteries, there would\u2019ve been nothing we could\u2019ve done,” Bebernitz says. “Once those fires are involved, that is stored energy. The only way to stop the fire is to release or drain it.\u201d<\/p>\n
No injuries were reported, and Jacksonville Fire Rescue says there is no perceived health risk to the public from the fire. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A massive fire at Jacksonville’s Smurfit WestRock recycling plant challenged firefighters with intense flames and wind. JACKSONVILLE, Fla.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-150926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-jacksonville","9":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","10":"tag-jacksonville-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}