JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — UPDATE: AS OF 4:04 P.M., THE FIRE HAS REIGNITED.
Emergency officials are investigating after a fire broke out at a manufacturing plant in Brunswick Saturday morning.
A massive cloud of dark smoke clouded the sky over the Pinova plant, which manufactures plastic resin. No one was hurt, but emergency officials are investigating what caused the fire. They say workers were nearby when the fire started at about 7 a.m.
"They heard a pop, came out and they saw there was a fire in their area," said Glynn County Fire and Rescue Chief Vincent DiCristofalo.
Pinova Senior Director of Operations Ron Kurtz says the fire was in the plant's terpene resins unit.
"It was terpene resins," Kurtz said when asked about the smoke plume. "This is material you use every day, a lot of adhesives, glues, that's where this material's going. It's also used in some food products."
The emergency management director for the county says one of their initial goals was to identify what chemicals could be involved in the plume of smoke.
"We immediately contacted National Weather Service to get a plume model to see where the the cloud was going," said Andrew Leanza, director of Glynn County Emergency Management and Homeland Security. "So we identified it, our initial isolation zones, we weren't concerned when we looked at the ERG once we identified the chemicals so it was in our favor today. But that was something that we've been monitoring and we'll continue to monitor."
This is not the first time these first responders or this community have dealt with something like this lately. In November multiple explosions occurred at Symrise chemical plant in Brunswick.
First Coast News asked what the officials want to say to Glynn County residents who are worried.
"We have been talking in the last few weeks and we're talking real close this morning," said Brunswick Fire Chief Tim White. "Us and the county are going to work together because the other one was in the county, this one was in the city. We're going to work together with our inspection divisions to be closely monitoring these plants and get more information firsthand before we have an incident."
DiCristofalo says it took nine apparatuses, 25 firefighters and roughly an hour and a half to put the fire out. The cause of the fire is under investigation and Kurtz says a full report will be released in about two weeks.
