Hot liquid glass causes hours-long fire at bottling facility
By Austen Erblat
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WHEATRIDGE, Colorado (KCNC) — More than 50 firefighters from several Colorado fire departments worked for hours to contain a fire at the Rocky Mountain Bottle Company on Sunday morning. That fire appears to have been caused by hot liquid glass spilling in the facility, investigators say.
The first reports of the fire at the bottling facility came in just before 1 a.m. and the Arvada Fire Department responded to the facility near Miller Street and West 50th Avenue. As crews worked to extinguish that fire and treat workers, additional units from the Fairmount Fire Protection District and West Metro Fire Rescue responded to help.
The liquid glass spill was caused by equipment malfunction, Arvada FD said, and the resulting fire caused heavy smoke. Five workers and one firefighter were evaluated at the scene for injuries, but none were serious enough for them to be taken to the hospital.
The fire department described the incident as involving “hot, dark and noisy conditions,” where crews had to navigate large distances with fire hoses to locate the starting point of the fire.
After a fire at a storage unit and a fiery plane crash, the Arvada Fire Department has kept busy. Thankfully, no one was taken to the hospital in Sunday morning’s blaze.
“It’s been a busy week in our district, with several notable incidents,” the department said in a statement. “We’re proud of our personnel, who bring a high level of skill, training and dedication to emergencies both big and small, around the clock!”
The bottling facility was also the scene of a fire last summer in the building’s basement. In that fire, several people were injured, but they were relatively minor. The fire department appears well prepared to deal with fires at the facility too, as it held “mock fire” training scenarios there in 2018.
CBS News Colorado reached out to the Rocky Mountain Bottle Company for comment but did not immediately receive a response Sunday afternoon.
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