Date: March 4, 2018
Location: Live Oak, Florida (USA)
Address: 17152 46th Trace, Live Oak, 32060
Type: Dust Fire
Fuel: Pine (Wood Shavings)
Industry: Pine Sawmill (Wood Products)
Equipment: Welding, Shaker Unit
Company: Klausner Trading USA, Inc.
Previous Incidents: None Recorded
Loss: No Injuries
Capital Cost: Unknown
Status: Open
Confirmation: Unknown
Company Description:
According to the company website, the Klausner Group was founded in 1991, when Austrian Fritz Klausner built his mill in former East Germany as a green field investment. The company and sales management office, Klausner Trading International, is headquartered in Oberndorf, Austria.
Klausner Trading USA, Inc. (KTU) is headquartered in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and was first established in 2006. KTU is the sole distributor of products from Klausner US worldwide and Europe sold in North America.
Klausner Lumber One (KL1) is a state-of-the-art Southern Yellow Pine sawmill. The company also runs a second mill, Klausner Lumber Two (KL2), and together the two facilities have a combined production capacity of approximately 350 million board feet per year, equivalent to 500,000 cubic meters (m3) of construction quality lumber. The company produces US domestic sizes as well as International metric dimensions and lengths.
Description of Lumber Mill Wood Shavings Fire:
On March 7, 2018, Suwannee Democrat reported that a fire had caused minimal damage at a lumber yard in Live Oak, Florida. The Public Safety Director said that crews were alerted to the fire at the Klausner Lumber One sawmill in Live Oak at around 4 pm on Sunday, March 4, 2018. The fire was quickly extinguished by Suwannee County Fire Rescue.
It was reported that a member of Klausner staff was welding when the fire broke out, and an ember fell into some wood shavings which caught fire. Suwannee County Fire Rescue said that staff initiated emergency procedures quickly and, as a result, the fire did not escalate.
Damage was contained to the shaker unit at the lumber yard. A Klausner spokesperson said the fire did not cause any major damage nor stop production. All employees were evacuated safely and no injuries were reported.
An establishment search showed that Klausner Lumber has several OSHA inspections and a number of violations for fall protection systems at their Florida and North Carolina facilities. An inspection opened on February 9, 2016, was flagged under the National Combustible Dust Emphasis Program but the inspection detail shows that no citations were levied for the facility complaint.
In January 2017, Suwanee Democrat reported that Klausner had temporarily laid off a number of employees after the company lost two weeks of production due to extensive maintenance. At the time it was reported that further repair work was expected, with the consequence that production would be slowed or completely stopped and the mill would not be running at full capacity.
Sources:
Suwannee Democrat (fire)
WCTV
Suwannee Democrat (layoffs)
OSHA (search results for Klausner Lumber One)
OSHA (inspection detail, Nr: 1124605.015)