Ohio Ag Net | Ohio's Country Journal Ohio Ag Net | Ohio's Country Journal On Monday, Washington Court House fire crews were called to the ethanol plant in Bloomingburg for reports of an explosion and a silo fire.
According to reports in the Record Herald, the incident at the Valero plant is being classified as “smouldering fire” for the time being.
“When we got to the plant, we were told there was an explosion and it was estimated that the roof came about six inches off the silo. The concrete is broken up and you can tell that there was a pretty decent sized explosion there,” Fire Chief Tom Youtz said. “We didn’t get any water to the silo because we didn’t really know what kind of damage was done on the roof.”
Valero shut the entire plant down and has marked off the two silos impacted by the fire. Valero will be monitoring for any serious issues overnight, and if anything happens they will be calling the fire department back in.
Men were working on a bearing on an electric motor at the time of the explosion. There were no injuries reported.
