Firefighters still have not been able to get into the Fuyao building that caught fire on Sunday night to determine the cause until structural engineers rule the building safe.
News Center 7’s Mike Campbell talked to city leaders in Moraine on Thursday, and they said the size of the building and the fire meant all hands on deck up through top management, so today was the first time they’ve had to talk publicly.
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City leaders explained the steps they took to make sure there was no danger to the community and how their biggest challenges centered around the weather conditions.
Moraine Fire Chief Traci Kuzminski said, “The wind mainly that night kept changing directions. It was ranging from 40 to 50 miles per hour.”
The fire at Fuyao was fueled by the wind, and then storms made the conditions even worse.
“We can’t have firefighters on ladders and aerial devices while it’s lightning,” Kuzminski said.
Kuzminski was joined by Moraine’s city manager and mayor, who said this was a once-in-a-decade type of fire.
“We used over 20 million gallons of water on the fire,” Kuzminski said.
She also said firefighters went inside the building the first night and confirmed there was no fire inside. And all Fuyao employees made it out safely.
City officials said their main concern was about the heavy smoke and the community, which is why they requested the EPA.
“On a fire this big, just because of the runoff of the water and the air, I decided to give them a call to put people’s minds at ease,” Kuzminski said.
She also said the EPA only found elevated levels of particulate matter or volatile organic compounds during the fire’s Tuesday afternoon flare-up. They said the EPA determined everything remained in safe ranges.
Firefighters seemed to change tactics that Tuesday afternoon, using ladder trucks to get on the roof and declaring the fire out a few hours later.
“Put a few on the roof to try to put that last little bit out once we determined that part of the roof had not been burned yet,” Kuzminski said.
City leaders said their investigators will work with the state’s fire marshal’s office to look at what caused the fire. That process may take several days because they must get inside and on top.
When that is complete, the building will be returned to Fuyao for use.
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