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Show Fire Ccaisses !i Biiiiigs cs! Atlas Minerals iiflocsb Mil A major fire occurring at Atlas Minerals north of Moab Mo-ab Christmas morning obliterated oblit-erated the joy of the season for many employees and officials of-ficials of the plant. The fire was discovered shortly boforo 4 a.m. by Ivan Winters, an employee at Uie plant, who immdiately notified not-ified his superior. According to Winters the fire apparently appar-ently began in the electrical wiring which was on fire overhead a tank filled with flammable mixture. According to General Man ager P. V. Bctliurum, the fire was mainly contained in a rectangular tank having dimensions of about 100 feet lung by 21) feet wide. The tank was a uranium solvent extraction unit which had five compartments. It contained con-tained kerosene and other chemicals capable of extracting ex-tracting uranium. The Moab Volunteer Fire . Department arrived within minutes oi notification and began pouring water into the burning fluid in the tank. According to Fire Chief Marvin Clever, it was necessary nec-essary for the firemen to spray only enough water into in-to the tank to fill it to the brim and cool the solution. Any more water into the tank would have caused the flaming flam-ing kerosene mixture to overflow ov-erflow into other areas of the mill. The firemen wst the surface of the flaming solution until just about to the brim, then would have to wait until more of the kerosene burned off. A major amount of the damage da-mage at the plant was caused later when due to the heat a superstructure overhead collapsed and toppled onto the main extraction tan!?. This ruptured tanks containing contain-ing organic material and according ac-cording to Chief Clever, the flaming material sprayed all over and spread the fire to other vats nearby. The nearby tanks, some of which were encased with wooden staves, caught on fire and were scorched and charred, but not destroyed. Only the main extraction, tank was damaged extensiv ely as well as the superstructure super-structure which fell from above. When the superstructure fell it ruptured the tank where the fire had been contained. con-tained. This in turn caused the burning fluid to flow out and would have spread the fire into other portions of the mill if crews hadn't used front-end loaders to build dikes. This diking procedure, according to Marvin Clever, enables the men to contain the fire in a lake and prevented pre-vented the further spread of the fire. The firemen also continued wetting the sides of nearby tanks which contained volatile vola-tile mixtures and prevented more damage in that way. The fire resulted in a "tangled mess of steel and burnt wood," Clever said. At the time of the fire, General Manager of the Atlas plant at Moab, P. V. Bethur-um Bethur-um was in Denver for the holiday. Thursday morning he expressed his appreciation apprecia-tion for the local firemen, and commended them for the "excellent job which they did in containing the fire." Bethurum also expressed his thanks to Texas Gulf Sulphur Sul-phur Co. officials, Bill Bes-singer Bes-singer and Robert Curfman for their offer to supply men to help battle the huge fire. There were also employes of the plant itself who gave excellent ex-cellent assistance in battling the flams. "The combined efforts of these men," said Mr. Bethurum, Be-thurum, "undoubtedly prevented pre-vented further damage by the fire." Although unofficial, reports shortly after the time of the fire stated that he damage-amounted damage-amounted close to 1 million, officials at the Atlas plant said that it was too early to assess the damage. "These reports are only pure speculation," said Mr. Bethurum who further said there would be no additional releases until insurance investigators in-vestigators and officials had made their inspection of the fire damage. |
