Canby Herald Online

Fire damages nursery building

Damages are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in Saturday blaze

• By: John Baker  
• Published: 12/8/2009 2:31:10 PM

FIRE --
The glow of fire truck lights illuminates firefighter's efforts during the fire.

An early Saturday morning fire did upwards of $500,000 damage to a Willamette Nursery cold storage facility.

About 5 a.m. Saturday, Canby Fire District units were called out to two overlapping reported structure fires — the first a residential fire in the 1500 block of NE 19th Loop.
The second call, which came in four minutes later, sent them to a reported commercial fire in the 25000 block of S. Barlow Road.

Firefighters at the first call found no fire, just a furnace malfunction, so they raced to join their fellow firefighters at the second call at Willamette Nursery’s 10,000-square-foot warehouse and cold storage facility.

“When crews got there, fire and smoke was showing through the southeast wall and roof,” said Troy Buzalsky, division chief. “There was a brisk wind blowing, which was carrying the smoke to the south, which meant we couldn’t attack the fire from the south.”

Buzalsky said that when confronted by a long, thin building like this one, firefighters “have to figure out where the fire is burning and how you are going to attack it with limited entry doors and not knowing what was inside the building.”

Firefighters from Canby, Clackamas, Aurora, Monitor and Molalla took more than two hours to get the fire under control while battling cold and a lack of fire hydrants in the area.

“At one point, I was convinced we were going to write off the whole building,” said Buzalsky. “We evaluated the pieces and resources we had and put the water and people in the right location to save half the building.”

Ultimately, four water tenders shuttled water to the scene to support the efforts.
The structure suffered significant damage to at least half the building, however there was some good news. Firefighters were able to stop the fire’s spread before it consumed the building’s cold storage cooler and its contents, valued at about $700,000.

“The fuel load on the north side of the building was astronomical with these little sticks of trees that were located in the coolers,” said Buzalsky. “We were very fortunate to contain the fire to the extreme south side of the building.”

Buzalsky said the fire district worked hard to get electricity back up at the warehouse coolers, calling in Cornerstone Disaster to facilitate. He said through an organized cooperative effort among many county entities, the electricity was up and the coolers working before nightfall Saturday.

“We wanted to try to facilitate the salvage of product as much as possible,” said Buzalsky.

In fact, the quick response of firefighters was made possible by a bit of good fortune and timing. A taxi driver, who services a client in the area, uses the gravel parking area next to Willamette Nursery as a place to stop and stretch during long hours.
Saturday morning, the driver was doing just that when he heard a “whoomp” behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw flames shooting out of the building.

“We feel real fortunate that happened the way it did,” said Buzalsky. “We only had one 911 call on that and it came from him. Who knows how long it would have taken if he hadn’t been there.”

Due to the cold, other factors played into the firefighting operation. A gravel truck had to be called out to gravel the road around the nursery because the water runoff was freezing on the road.
Additionally, Buzalsky said that firefighters had to be constantly monitored for signs of hypothermia. With water flying and sweat building in their clothing, combined with temperatures into the low 20s, body temperature became a factor.

“We’re happy to report that there were no injuries,” said Buzalsky.

Investigators have not ruled out spontaneous ignition of oil soaked rags as a possible fire cause, however, an official fire cause has not yet been determined.

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