Top: Fire fighters gain entry to the building where thousands of litres of hazardous chemicals were in danger of being exposed to the fire.By Shaun Inguanzo
KEYSBOROUGH streets, parks and waterways could have been stained with 25,000 litres of hazardous dye if not for the amazing efforts of local firefighters.
A fire at a chemical factory 5am on Saturday in Fiveways Boulevard required 40 firefighters from both the Country Fire Authority and Metropolitan Fire Brigade to combat, due largely to the complexity of dealing with chemicals.
CFA Westernport Area operations manager Trevor Owen said the factory contained multiple 25,000 litre containers of black dye that if struck by fire, and extinguished with water, could have severely stained streets, parks, and caused an environmental disaster in local waterways.
But, Mr Owen said that the quick-thinking of firefighters to grab the company’s chemical manifest and work out a snap plan to combat the blaze enabled them to protect the drums – and their dye – from being exposed to the fire.
“It really only needed to be the smallest amount of dye mixing with water for the effects to be very, very significant,” Mr Owen said.
“The cleanup costs would have been horrendous.”
Mr Owen said the fire had already struck a range of other chemicals that released toxic vapours.
Nearby residents were evacuated, but the rest were told to remain inside as firefighters worked to clean up the scene all day Saturday.
“We also needed to be very careful how much water we were putting on the fire because of the run off concerns into nearby creeks and drains,” he said.
Mr Owen said the factory fire served as an important reminder to factory owners to keep chemical and dangerous goods manifests up to date so that in the event of an emergency firefighters could formulate a plan to keep residents safe.
