Major fire hits fertilizer plant in Illinois

Piper City, Ill.-Local and state investigators, along with company officials, are searching for the cause of a major fire that destroyed a combination bulk chemical and warehouse building at the Heritage FS fertilizer plant here early Sunday, Nov. 5. Heritage officials said their Piper City operations are shut down at least temporarily, but customers are being taken care of by two other company locations only a few miles away. Dave Cochran, environmental regulations manager, could make no estimate of the loss as yet, but said trucks, loaders, and packaged agriculture chemicals, including herbicides, were destroyed. He said the DAP, potash, and other fertilizers warehoused in another building were not affected by the fire. “It was a bad timing for us with the fall season just getting underway,” Cochran remarked. “But our customers will be driving only a few extra miles to our other locations.” “The EPA brought in a decontamination unit out of Champaign,” Piper City Assistant Fire Chief Don Hitchens told the local press. “Everybody had to be decontaminated.” He said EPA also evacuated residents within a five-mile radius to the north and east of the plant, but most of them were allowed to return Sunday night.