100 tons of lithium batteries burn in Illinois building — thousands evacuated.
[Autoblog] Toxic fumes and smoke from a burning former paper mill in northern Illinois that officials had believed was long abandoned but actually contained massive amounts of lithium batteries prompted officials to extend an evacuation order for residents in the area.The fire that started in Morris prompted city officials to order the evacuation of 3,000-4,000 people in some 950 nearby homes, a school, church and small businesses.
The fire continued to burn about 70 miles southwest of Chicago, and residents now will not be allowed to return home until 9 p.m. Thursday, officials said. An earlier order was to end at 9 p.m. Wednesday.
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Lithium batteries have exploded inside the building, and fire officials have said they decided to let the blaze burn out because they fear trying to extinguish it could trigger more explosions.
The building — to the surprise of the fire department and other city agencies — was being used to store nearly 100 tons of lithium batteries ranging in size from cellphone batteries to large car batteries.
Firefighters stopped using water on the blaze minutes after they arrived when they discovered the batteries because water and firefighting foam can cause batteries to explode.
And Fire Chief Tracey Steffes said while he has heard some ideas on how to battle the blaze — road salt has been suggested — he won’t send crews to battle the fire because of the unknowns about what’s inside.
Tracey Steffes, Fire Chief
I don’t know 100% what was stored in that building, only what they’re telling us what was stored in that building.
Further, Steffes said that while his department and other agencies have fought fires at buildings that contain lithium batteries, he had thus far found nobody with fires that involve so many batteries. He said the battery explosions overnight could be heard across the city.
Mayor Chris Brown has said the city didn’t know the building was being used to store batteries until it caught fire, and that he knows very little about Superior Battery, the company that owns them.
Mayor Chris Brown
The name of the company is Superior Battery … and we didn’t know they existed until yesterday afternoon.
Apparently nobody else at City Hall did either, because there’s no record of a business license or any communication between the company and any city department, he said.
Barely concealing his anger at the very serious danger his firefighters were in, Steffe suggested that he couldn’t trust any information coming from the company as a result.
“We had no way of knowing they were doing business … there,” said Steffes, adding a company official told him they had occupied the building for about a year. Steffes said the paper mill had been vacant for decades.
Company representatives were not invited to a Wednesday news conference about the fire, officials said.
The mayor said the police department will conduct an investigation about the storage of the batteries and that other agencies, including the state fire marshal and the Illinois Attorney General’s office, have already been contacted.
The Morris fire came two weeks after explosions and a massive blaze at a chemical plant near Rockton, an Illinois town along the Wisconsin border, forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes for several days. Nobody at the plant or the surrounding community was injured by the June 13 fire that officials later determined was started accidentally during maintenance work.
100 tons of lithium batteries burn in Illinois building — thousands evacuated [UPDATE], July 1, 2021
