Major Fire at Royal Foods Plant Under Investigation
Roads leading up to the facility were closed.
A significant plant fire at Royal Foods in Pell City, AL, on Tuesday had the Pell City Fire Department engaged in a challenging and ongoing battle.
The fire, initially reported Tuesday at 6 p.m., required extensive efforts from multiple fire departments and emergency agencies. Firefighters have successfully managed to prevent the blaze from spreading to other buildings, focusing their efforts on containing it within the plant. Fortunately, no injuries have been reported so far.
Pell City Fire Chief Tim Kurzejeski said 90% of their department was on the scene, and at one point 50-60 firefighters. In total, crews were on scene for 26 hours.
"When they went in they were getting a pretty good push on the fire, but the fire actually turned and come around the back side of us so we had to evacuate the building. At that time we started to have a partial roof collapse, we had some walls that were starting to lean in so we went into defensive mode and pulled all our people out," said Kurzejeski.
He said the building is 60 years old and has many additions, which caused firefighters to have trouble entering the building. Three million gallons of water were used to fight the fire at the time of the report.
Today, officials said the cause of the fire is under investigation. The fire has been contained to just the meat smoking facility, which Pell City Mayor Bill Pruitt said is because of the hard work of 12 responding agencies.
“When they need help, we respond,” Pruitt said. “We need help, they respond, and they came out in force last night. That’s one of the great things about our department and the relationship we have with surrounding communities."
The meat smoking facility was the original Royal Foods building. Pruitt said most of the operation from that meat smoking facility was already moved to the Royal Foods new facility before the fire started.
“So that’s certainly going to be helpful in keeping things going while they rebuild,” Pruitt said.
Royal Foods employs 130 people at the Pell City plant. In a statement, Royals Foods General Manager Ricky Hall assured the public and all employees the company is not going anywhere, and no one would be losing their jobs, CBS 42 reported.
Royal Foods is a meat processing plant that has been around since 1978, specializing in smoked meats in the Southeastern US.
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