IT WAS ONE YEAR AGO THAT A GRAIN SILO in Worms, Germany, burned and then exploded while the local firefighters were working the fire. The blast killed one of the FF’s and left him buried in the grain for five days until the rescuers were able to retrieve his body. Read the Firgeezer reports on this LODD and rescue HERE and HERE.
Due to the instability of the damaged silo and the precariousness of the debris, retrieval of the firefighter
was delayed until a specialist team was able to cut a 6 ft. by 10 ft. hole through one of the
concrete panels while they were suspended from a crane platform/basket.
* * *
One year later to the day, on November 30 a silo in the same complex had a fire start up in it that was detected by a flue-gas detector. The Worms fire brigade, which is an all-volunteer company, responded and decided to introduce nitrogen into the grain-filled silo to displace the oxygen and snuff the fire. After being on the scene for a day, it was discovered that fires had begun spontaneously in two more silos for a total of three burning.
Smoke seeps from one of the silos this past weekend.
After those three were extinguished using a nitrogen extractor that is normally used by coal mines to displace dangerous underground gasses and extinguish mine fires, still another six silos began burning this past weekend. By Sunday night there were a total of 18 silos burning. It was then determined that the fires were too much for the 50-man volunteer FD and they were permitted to leave. The cost of the operation had also become too much of a burden for the town. A dispatch of equipment and manpower from the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was brought in along with a major appliance from the private fire brigade of a plastics refinery.
As of Monday, several silos were still burning, but any progress since then has not yet been reported.
Sources:
The Wormser Zeitung
SWR.de
Assisted by Christian Lewalter
Also on FireGeezer…
- Grain Dryer Fire Pulls Two Alarms – November 17, 2011
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