Firefighters extinguished a second-alarm fire in machinery at Spring Grove's Pixelle paper mill early Wednesday morning, officials said.
Firefighters were called to the scene of the fire inside the pulpwood facility of the plant on the 5600 block of York Road in North Codorus Township around 2:22 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, said North Codorus Township Fire Department Chief Tim Carr.
The fire mainly involved the conveyor belt and machinery, Carr said, though firefighters worked for around three hours to extinguish hotspots around the facility due to embers creating spot fires in the residual saw dust scattered around the facility.
When lumber trucks drop logs off at the lumberyard, they are pulled into the pulpwood facility, Carr said. Inside, the logs are placed onto a conveyor belt and are processed through several tumblers, which take the bark off the wood.
After the bark is removed, the wood is cleaned, and then is sent across to the actual paper mill, which is across a bridge from the pulpwood facility.
The process creates a significant amount of residual sawdust, Carr said, which covered much of the building's interior.
While the fire didn't involve any structural portion of the building, the spot fires in the residual sawdust provided a challenge for responding crews, who chased small smoldering fires around the building.
"It was very time consuming," said Carr, who noted his department and mutual aid departments are very familiar with the building and the challenges it presents.
In extinguishing the fire, Carr estimated crews used about 20,000 gallons off of the fire hydrant system in the area, most of which was spent on wetting down hotspots. A second alarm was requested in order to bring more units to the scene to assist with manpower while clearing hotspots around the large facility.
Despite media reports of an injury, Carr said neither he nor his operations chief at the scene were made aware of any firefighters that were injured during the fire.
Carr said crews from Pixelle had been on scene in the morning evaluating what they would need to repair to return the facility to operation, but it was unclear to Carr how long that would take.
Requests for comment from Pixelle Specialty Solutions by The Evening Sun about when the facility is expected to return to operations were not immediately responded to Wednesday morning.
Due to the size of the paper mill, the complete facility is actually located in three municipalities, Carr explained. On one end, off of Old Hanover Road, the facility is in Jackson Township. The Pulp Wood Facility, and other parts, are located in North Codorus Township.
Then, the bulk of the facility is located in Spring Grove Borough, Carr said. That means three departments are responsible for different portions, between Nashville Fire Department of Jackson Township, Friendship Hose Company of Spring Grove, and Carr's North Codorus Township Fire Department.
The three departments are "virtually interchangeable," Carr said, and frequently train together on the facility as a whole.
"We've all been trained together and understand the layouts of the buildings there to be able to access whatever we need to get done," Carr said.
"Everything went smoothly this morning," Carr said, thanking neighboring departments for their help.
Carr said he placed units in service around 5:39 a.m., after crews had worked for about three hours to ensure the fire was out.
North Codorus Township Fire Department was assisted by numerous departments, including Friendship Hose Company of Spring Grove, Nashville Volunteer Fire Department, Porters Volunteer Fire Company, Hanover Area Fire & Rescue, Jefferson Volunteer Fire Company, Northeast Adams Fire & EMS, West Manchester Township Fire Department, Fairview Township Fire Department, Wellspan EMS, Strinestown Community Fire Company, and Dover Township Volunteer Fire Department.
This article originally appeared on Hanover Evening Sun: Firefighters extinguish machinery fire in pulpwood facility at Spring Grove paper mill
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