ELORA – Elora and Fergus firefighters responded to a fire call at the Jefferson Elora plant on Oct. 2 to find lots of smoke but no fire inside the building.
However, there had been a fire in the mechanical room, deputy chief Jonathan Karn said in an interview, and all employees were safely evacuated for a few hours.
The call came in around 5pm.
“There were smoke and flames inside the room,” Karn said. “But by the time we arrived on scene, maintenance staff had isolated the fire to a large air compressor and the fire had stopped.”
There was still quite a bit of smoke and firefighters ventilated the building, “which was a bit of an undertaking,” Karn said. “It’s quite a large complex.”
One firefighter was treated on scene for smoke inhalation and did not need to go to hospital. No other injuries were reported.
Karn said the company has three large air compressors to run its machinery but only requires two, so once the building was sufficiently ventilated, employees were able to go back to work.
Firefighters were on scene for 90 minutes, “and we left the compressor in the hands of maintenance staff to repair,” he said.
