Fire Broke Out At Welshpool WA

06 Feb 2015

A small fire broke out at Solahart manufacturing plant of hot water heater manufacturer and supplier, Rheem Australia  in Welshpool, Western Australia, at pretty nearly 10:23am (AWST) on 5th February 2015. 

Fire brigades and other aids from the Metropolitan Fire and Rescue Service arrived immediately at the scene and smothered the flame, which broke down in the main building. 

"There was not any loss of life in this unfortunate accident and our staff was rapidly and securely emptied from the building," says plant manager Gary Higgs. "The fire was restricted to a small zone, and the fire brigade kept on assessing the circumstances." 

As reported by media, the cause of fire was not gas leakage. Possibly, an acetylene bottle's valve had been broken during the changing over, that caused a spark which resulted in igniting the gas from the broken bottle that was ascertained to be cause of this fire. Eight of the 16 acetylene bottles were affected by the fire, and the fire brigades worked rapidly to cool the bottles, to attempt and avert further fires. 

The underground natural gas mains supply was segregated, as was the main power supply to the site. 

The Fire and Rescue Service and police cleared all premises close to the Solahart site as a safety measure and installed a 1.5km exclusion zone around the site. The Fire and Rescue Service brought the fire under control within 5 - 6 hours. 

Damage should be assessed later within 2 or 3 days and an investigation has been initiated to determine the cause of the fire. Hopefuly factory will recommence production by this Monday, 9 February.”

Some Solahart representatives were not able to collect their vehicles because of the exclusion zone, the fire brigade and police had set up, so Solahart is taking care of transport prerequisites to drop them to their homes. 

To avoid such accidents, it is always recommended to use dangerous good storage cabinets. Backsafe Australia offers a wide range of flammable liquids storage cabinets or gas cylinder storage that can be best solution for averting such mishappenings at the workplace.

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