PIKE TWP., Ohio — A massive blaze at an oil company took firefighters six hours to get under control Thursday and will require an extensive environmental cleanup.
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The fire started about 11 a.m. as R.D. Holder crews loaded a semi-tanker, said company owner Bob Holder.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but King believed it ignited while workers transferred a fluid from one tank to another. It was not immediately known what type of fluid was being transferred.

After about 45 minutes, firefighters ordered first responders and company employees back as the blaze spread. Transformers exploded and electric lines fell on the scene about 12:45 p.m., forcing firefighters back even more. And as the fire spread, the building began to collapse.

Pardubice, East Bohemia, March 29 (CTK) - The extensive fire that burst out in the Synthesia chemical plant complex early this morning fortunately injured no one but it caused an estimated damage worth up to 25 million crowns, local firefighters and police spokespersons told CTK.

The fire started around 4:00 in consequence of an accident in the premises belonging to Rekla, a company that handles mineral oils and is seated in the Synthesia complex.

Fifteen firefighter units, professional and voluntary, tackled the fire and its aftermath for about three hours, Synthesia spokeswoman Jaroslava Dolezalova told CTK.

The police and firemen will now start enquiring into the cause of the accident.

The fire injured no one, nor did it endanger the environment, Dolezalova said.

The firefighters originally said poisonous substances had leaked in the air and called on the residents of Pardubice, the regional centre with a population of 90,000, not to open the windows and not to leave their homes unless urgently necessary.

Dismissing the information, Dolezalova said expert measurements have not registered any leak of poisonous fumes.

The fire started at an oil processing line and spread to two halls that serve as oils store, causing several explosions and destroying two lorries, said Vendula Horakova, regional fire squad's spokeswoman.

Poor facilities, lax management and under-qualified workers may all have played a role in the chemical factory blast in Hebei province that killed 25 people and injured 46, according to a preliminary investigation.
The investigation's findings, released by the State Administration of Work Safety on its website on Tuesday afternoon, said that 25 people were killed in the accident and four were still missing, a sharp increase from the 17 casualties announced on Feb 29. There were no updates to the list of injured, which remains at 46 people. On Feb 28, a blast ripped through the Keeper Chemical Factory in Zhaoxian county, Hebei province, razing the three-story building. The explosion also seriously damaged other buildings at the site and shattered the windows of houses up to two kilometers away.
The investigation found that a heat transfer oil spill under one of the three chemical reactors inside the factory caused a fire that heated the ammonium nitrate and guanidine nitrate in the reactor. Both compounds are used to make explosives and explode at high temperatures.
This caused one reactor to explode, triggering a second, massively destructive blast in the plant.

Workers at a New Jersey refinery are busy cleaning up a 6-million-gallon oil spill that is producing odors as far away as Delaware and Maryland, officials say.

The oil spilled from a 12-million-gallon tank at the PBF Energy-owned Paulsboro Refining Co. at Greenwich, N.J., across the Delaware River from Philadelphia Airport.

A company spokesman says the tank sprung a leak around 1:30 p.m. Thursday but it all was contained in a dike on site and did not make it into the Delaware River.

Oil and hazardous chemicals are spilling into the Greater Victoria environment with alarming regularity, according to a major mop-up company.

"I would much rather not do emergency response. I would much rather teach people how not to spill," said David Rogers, founder of B.C. Hazmat Management, one of the privatesector spill responders in Greater Victoria.

"This last year we have had one major spill a month and five years ago we had one or two a year," Rogers said.

Some of the increase is probably due to increasing awareness, he said.

"Ten years ago, an oil spill was something that you just washed away, and now the public is becoming more and more environmentally aware," he said.

That means many companies are taking spill-prevention education seriously, and municipalities such as Saanich are giving specialized staff training.

Work will continue overnight to contain an oil spill at Shell's Clyde refinery in western Sydney.

An unknown amount of a petroleum-based product spilled into Duck Creek at Clyde around 4pm (AEDT) on Wednesday after an overflow at the oil refinery.

Recent heavy rainfall meant the storm water overflow system was unable to contain all of the rain water, causing an overflow, a Shell spokesman said.

"Unfortunately, the overflow material contained oil," the spokesman said in a statement.

Spontaneous combustion of an oiled cloth used for home renovations was the cause of a house fire in South Auckland yesterday.

Two fire trucks battled flames at the Papatoetoe home after a neighbour, who had spotted the roof ablaze, phoned 111 about 4am.

Fire safety officer Phil Faidley was yesterday at the Wyllie Rd address determining the cause of the blaze which saw one woman admitted to Middlemore Hospital for smoke inhalation.

He said a discarded cloth that had been used to oil doors spontaneously ignited - something he has seen in six fire investigations in the past two years.

A chemical reaction between natural oils and the fabric resulted in heat, which later ignited the fabric.

"The more the heat builds up the more active the reaction becomes and it gets hotter and hotter and hotter until it gets to the point, probably at about 250C, the rag will ignite."

He said linseed oil had fuelled the Papatoetoe fire.

CARTERET — Minue Street remains closed from Roosevelt Avenue to Bryla Street as the Middlesex County Hazmat team continues to clean up a mineral-oil spill from the PSE&G power substation on Roosevelt Avenue. Authorities expect the roadway to remain closed until Friday morning, Fire Chief Brian O’Connor said.

O’Connor said the department was called to the scene at 8 a.m. Thursday morning on a report of a transformer failure that caused a leak of the mineral oil. Nearly 14,000 gallons of the oil is estimated to have leaked from the facility.

“This is a nonhazardous oil. It is similar to the mineral oil you purchase in the store,” O’Connor said. “But it leaked onto the roadway. This caused the road to become very slick.”

Police said there was a large stream of black liquid pooled along the curbside of Minue Street extending northbound into the sewer drain just before Roosevelt Avenue. Carteret firefighters attempted to create a barricade with topsoil.

A section of Marshall Road, just west of Zeeb Road, in Scio Township will remain closed through Friday morning as an environmental cleanup company proceeds with the cleanup of an oil spill from an old transformer.
Firefighters and the county HAZMAT director were awaiting test results on the spilled oil Thursday evening before they could proceed with the cleanup. The fire department received the call around 4:20 p.m., and by 8 p.m. it was determined that the oil did not contain polychlorinated biphenyls, a highly toxic chemical compound.
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Scio Township Fire Chief Carl Ferch said the about 6-foot tall, 4-foot wide and 3-foot deep old transformer was being transported on its side by a towing company. It had been picked up from a business near Huron River Drive and Zeeb Road.

WHEATFIELD — An employee at the Saint-Gobain plant on Walmore Road in Wheatfield was injured during a flash fire there Wednesday morning.

Niagara County Sheriff’s deputies said hot oil spilled from a pipe at the plant and started a small fire. An employee suffered minor burns to his hand and forearm and was treated at the scene.

Saint-Gobain produces ekonol polyester resin at that location using heated oil that is contained in pipes. It appears the pipe became over pressurized  and the hot oil spilled over igniting nearby materials, sheriff’s deputies said. No damage estimate has been given.

CAL FIRE says eight people were treated for contamination after being exposed to transformer oil.

Two of the victims are suspects who were trying to steal the transformers off the property on Aromitas Road, said the San Benito County Sheriff's Department.

CAL FIRE says the six other victims are sheriffs deputies from San Benito, Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties.

"We isolated the people and then denied entry to all others," said John Owens, CAL FIRE.  "The hazardous materials team kept the people who were contaminated isolated."

The two men were trying to steal the transformers out of Ag fields.  The spill's about 50 feet in diameter and Granite Rock, who owns the land, will have to hire a crew to clean up the spill, according to CAL FIRE.

The San Benito County Sheriff's Department said the men were most likely after the copper winding's inside the transformers.

FRANKLINVILLE, N.C. (WGHP)— Hazmat crews spent Saturday afternoon cleaning up an oil spill in the Deep River in Randolph County.

A salvage company was reportedly cleaning out an abandoned building that once housed Franklinville Manufacturing when a tank containing about 50 gallons of oil and sludge spilled into the Deep River, which feeds into the Cape Fear River.

Clean-up crews floated two barriers to keep the spill from spreading. Officials said the barriers are expected to collect all the spilled oil and sludge.

FRESH towels and massage oil have been identified as the cause of a fire which ripped through one of the Swindon College beauty training salons last week.

Fire crews were called to the Pegasus tower in the college’s North Star campus on April 12 after reports of a blaze on the fifth floor of the six-storey building.

Investigators have discovered that it started after a batch of towels, which had been used for massage and had just been washed and tumble-dried, were stacked in the corner of the room.

Alan Harper, the group manager for the Swindon area of Wiltshire fire and rescue service, was in charge of the investigation and said unusual circumstances led to the fire.

“The cause of the fire was down to some of the oils which were used as part of the health and beauty course,” he said.

“One of the oils, grape seed oil, which is part of the massage treatment, when that is absorbed into the towels the oil itself can then go through an oxidisation process which starts to self heat.

Police say a spill left several Burlington streets extremely slippery-- so slippery that one road was blocked off for a time.
The substance is a mineral-based oil that is non-toxic. Officials say it splashed out of a tanker truck that was hauling it. The oil came from a transformer by the Burlington Waterfront. It was pumped out when the transformer was moved. Apparently there was a problem with the cap on the truck and the substance spilled out as the truck drove through the city.
The substance left the areas where it spilled so slippery, that authorities compared it to black ice. They urged drivers to use extreme caution.
The Department of Public Works and fire crews have now cleaned up much of the spill and police say most roads are back to normal.
The truck is owned by a private hauler who was contracted to move the substance. Under Vermont law, the hauler will likely have to pay for the cost of the cleanup.