Mason City’s fire chief talks about challenges with response to Mason City Recycling fire
MASON CITY — Mason City’s fire chief talked this week with the City Council about his department’s response to a fire at Mason City Recycling back on Friday night.
Erik Bullinger says with the facility being just outside the city limits, there were no fire hydrants near the facility, with the nearest being at 34th and South Federal, meaning water had to be shuttled to the scene. “Some of those tankers involved would hold say 2500 or 3000 gallons of water at a time. Even with a constant supply of water coming in, we were using the water faster than we could bring it in. When we have a hydrant that is flowing freely, you can actually supply water to a couple of trucks working at full throttle, just putting out as much water as they can. So there’s quite a bit of difference.”
Bullinger says the conditions on Friday night caused issues as well. “This would be common with any kind of rural firefighting, when you are exposed to that element of the cold, everything freezes up, so you can imagine when you have the water out in the open, that is now freezing everything up externally too. Immediately we started having problems with valves, drains that normally we’d have no problem with. We had…well, I’ve got a list from that…it’s typical for having a fire in the winter, but when you are doing rural fire, you end up with a lot more issues with that kind of thing with mechanical problems.”
Bullinger was asked by a councilman whether the county should consider installing some fire hydrants out in that area. “I would say I would never say no to that.”
Bullinger’s department was assisted by fire departments from Rockwell, Nora Springs, Clear Lake and Ventura. No injuries were reported during the incident. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
