Alachua County Fire Rescue responds to 12th fire in 29 months at local fuelwood company

A Newberry fuelwood company had another fire Thursday morning, raising more concerns from Aalchua County officials about the string of events.

Firefighters from Alachua County Fire Rescue and the Newberry Fire Department responded to the fire at Southern Fuelwood, a Newberry business that produces cooking and heating woods. Firefighters were able to contain the fire to a single kiln and extinguish pallets of wood that were removed from the structure on fire, according to a Facebook post.

The call came in at 3:15 a.m. and was much smaller and more manageable than previous ones.

“This was a one-off,” ACFR Chief Harold Theus said. “This was not one of the kiln fires that I've been upset about in the past. I felt last night was hopefully just an isolated incident.”

Concerns over frequent fires

The latest fire is the 12th one in a 29-month period, Theus said. The last one, in June, left two firefighters injured, though both have now recovered.

“We have concerns about the frequency in which we respond to structure fires there, the time that it takes to extinguish those fires, and the hazard that it places our firefighters in while extinguishing the fires,” Theus said after responding to a fire at Southern Fuelwood in June.

The owner of Southern Fuelwood, Pat Post, said his business never had any fires until a 2010 Florida code change that now requires him to heat the wood to 160 degrees to kill bugs and other pathogens. Prior to the shift, Post said, the company dried the wood in the sun.

"We always let Mother Nature, the sun and the air dry the wood, but now we're forced to put it in the oven and cook it," Post said. "You're gonna have a fire once in a while when you have an oven trying to cook wood."

Looking for solutions

While Newberry has its own fire department, Theus said, Alachua County Fire Rescue has a legal and ethical obligation to continue to respond to calls if there are more fires at the business. Still, he added, the department is looking to change its methods for approaching these fires.

“I think that our practice is going to be a much more conservative approach,” Theus said in June. “Not aggressive firefighting tactics, but a very conservative approach to ensure that our folks are safe and that other people are safe while we're out there.”

While he couldn’t specify what a more conservative approach may look like, Theus said he is in talks with the city of Newberry about how Southern Fuelwood can reduce the frequency of structure fires. He also said he the response this time around was better than previous calls.

"We worked together as a team with Southern Fuelwood to get some of the wood out of the kiln area into a different area," he said. "I think it was a much more safer, methodical approach than we've had in the past."

Since June, there have been a series of meetings between Southern Fuelwood and the city of Newberry on how to manage the fires. Changes have since been made including changing how things are stored at the company and providing a designated water supply, Theus said.

"The city of Newberry has been working with Southern Fuelwood to improve the safety and fire prevention practices that are going on out there, and they have a plan in place that they've been working towards," he said. "Once I arrived to look at everything I wasn't upset or anything about last night."

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Newberry fuelwood company calls in 12th fire in 29 months