Date: June 1, 2018
Location: Bathurst, New Brunswick (Canada)
Address: 5060 NB-430, Big River, NB E2A 6T2
Type: Dust Collector Fire
Fuel: Wood
Industry: Lumber Mill
Equipment: Dust Collector
Company: Fornebu Lumber
Previous Incidents: None Recorded
Loss: None
Capital Cost: Unknown
Status: Open
Confirmation: Unconfirmed
Description of Fornebu Lumber:
According to the company website, Fornebu Lumber is a sawmill operating in Bathurst, New Brunswick, employing more than 125 people and consuming more than 400,000 cubic meters of lumber annually.
In addition to the sawmill, they also operate a forest management division and have an annual revenue of approximately $70 million CAD.
Description of Wood Dust Fire:
The incident was not reported through traditional media but rather was reported directly by the company on woodbusiness.ca, a forest industry magazine.
There were two fires at the location on June 1, 2018. The first fire began when a piece of wood got caught in a planer. Friction caused the piece of wood to catch fire. The planer was cleaned by the operator during a lunch break.
The second fire began when fire was transferred by the blower to the dust collector outside of the plant. In both cases, employees were able to extinguish the fire and no one was injured during the events despite discovering that the fire hydrant hadn’t been reactivated following the winter.
While the company is pleased with the response from their employees, as the company’s safety and training coordinator, “You might think you have everything under control or say, ‘We aren’t that bad,’ but the truth is, the risk is always there and we must remain vigilant in order to minimize the risk of fires from wood dust.”
The event led the company to institute a number of process changes to ensure both a reduction in future incidents as well as the company’s ability to deal with incidents that might still occur.
- A preventive maintenance (PM) work order was created to do a major cleaning of the planer on a monthly basis.
- A PM work order was created to clean the platform at the base of cyclone using an AWP. It was never cleaned since the platform was not safe to stand on.
- A work order was created for the yard labours to re-activate the rest of the fire hydrants on site.
- A project is in the works to obtain a new dust collector.
Fornebu Lumber states that they wanted to share the story with other companies in an effort to improve the manner in which companies deal with dust safety.
Sources:
WoodBusiness
