Fire department called to incident at Florikan

Sarasota, Fla.-The owner of Florikan ESA (Environmentally Sustainable Agriculture) said his time-release fertilizer plant operating in an industrial park here “was very lucky to come out unscathed as we did” when a smoldering fire broke out around mid-day April 26. “We didn’t really have a fire,” insisted Jon Rosenthal. “We had a coating drum that was smoldering. There was no damage to the building and no injuries.” But the Sarasota Fire Department apparently had different ideas after being alerted by a half dozen Florikan employees working in the plant on a Sunday. Fire crews responded to a four-alarmer with all 27 units, and had departments in nearby towns on standby in case fires broke out the same time. Sarasota Fire Capt. Mary Boutieller told Green Markets that there were some evacuations of other buildings in the industrial park where Florikan’s 5,000 square foot factory is located, but the number was small because it was a Sunday. She said the workers were mixing fertilizer that has to be heated up to a certain temperature. Apparently things got out of hand in one of the hoppers, which overheated toward the back of the building. The sprinkler system activated to keep it under control until fire crews arrived and put out the rest of the smoldering material. “State environmental services along with EPA had to get involved to make sure nearby ponds were not contaminated,” Boutieller reported. An unidentified employee described the mess from activation of the building’s sprinkler system as worse than what had been caused by the fire. Hazmat crews were on the scene early in the week doing the cleanup. Rosenthal conceded that there was some local concern, but said he believed it was because of the homes not too far away. He added that operations were shut down for a couple of days, but everything is fine now and the plant is back in production with no real problems. Rosenthal said Florikan was coating with urea and an organic food grade dye, which may have caused the environmental concern. He said most of it flowed into a man-made retention pond that’s used for runoff or excess rainwater.