Trumann, Ark.-Local fire investigators still haven’t been able to determine what caused a fire that destroyed two separate warehouses late last month at Poinsett Fertilizer Co. “We haven’t been able to determine the cause ourselves,” Assistant Trumann Fire Chief Ernie Link told Green Markets. “So we’ve turned it over to the insurance investigators.” Link said that there was definitely no suspicious activity. He said when firefighters arrived the wind, combined with cold temperatures, was whipping up the flames so there wasn’t much that could be done to save the buildings. “Both structures were so old and dried out it was just like a big kindling fire,” Link reported. Workers had just stocked one of the buildings a day earlier with potash, phosphate, urea, and ammonium sulfate, which Link assumed was a total loss because the fertilizer ended up at the bottom of a lot of building debris. David Box, one of Poinsett managers, declined to put a figure on the damage, but said it was substantial and both buildings were a total loss. Fire Chief Rick Winkles told the local press, “When the guys got there it was already on the roof area.” Winkles said it appears the fire may have started in the southeast corner of one of the buildings, both of which date back to the 1970s and were used for storage and blending of fertilizer.
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