Springfield mill fire

[backwoods sawyer]

Springfield Veneer/plywood plant leveled by a drier fire 240 employies all accounted for, damages in the millions.

Good company to work for with a strong safety program. I worked 17 yrs at a stud mill that they bought out. Steve Swanson was on site and Gene was already looking for openings at the other four plants to see if they could absorb all the employees within the group or other operations in the area. The Noti mill is their closest plant to the Springfield mill and the original Swanson mill.

Today I ran into Joe Reinhardt (head saw filer at the plant I worked at) and we went over some of the fires that almost got away from us over the years.
A flaming carriage returning home with 8' flames. Took close to an hour to get that one knocked down (hydraulic fluid)
Numerous chip bin fires.
Three days down after a fire under the upper infeed deck.
Wall fire at the stacker, smoldered for over a week with a constant fire watch, flooded the machine shop about a foot deep.
Welder fire while changing from twin double cuts to a set of quad bandmills.
And the out of state welder who I lightly wet down when his trousers were sending up 18" flames. That was downright funny, he had noticed the flames but wanted to finish a weld. Later he was telling his buddies that a rain cloud came along at the right time.
Almost ran out of barked log after a fire under the old ring barker shut down the block saw for a week.
Planer motor fires, that dust goes up quick. 
Lost a forklift to a battery fire, luckly the sawmill was down as we were changing a rollcase gearbox. I sent the whole crew on a fire extinguisher hunt, used 8 of the big ones and had our fire truck pumping water by the time local fire dept arrived (very near the main gas valve for whole the plant)
From the fifth floor one night we watched the flames from a mill 15 miles away as it burnt to the ground. That mill has been rebuilt.

This time of year with temps reaching triple digits a fire spreads real quickly. Good time to go test our fire equipment nothing like a dead battery in the ol fire truck, or the garden hose at the mill site has been used somewhere else.

The oldest boy just got back from Alaska and was telling about a friend of ours who lost his Mobile dimension mill to fire. Burning a tailing pile and fire got into the mill shed and engulfed the whole thing.

This is why I cringe when some of you light off big tailing fires near your mills without a wigwam