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Cause of fire at Ohio industrial park still unknown

Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved

By MARGARET HARDING
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)

State officials continued to investigate a fire yesterday that swept through the Central Ohio Industrial Park in Knox County on Monday.

“We’re still trying to determine the cause,” said Denise Lee, spokeswoman for the state fire marshal’s office.

She said she was unsure how long the investigation would take.

The Mount Vernon Fire Department arrived on the scene around 4 p.m. Monday, but the fire was “well-involved” at that point, Capt. Barry Bowden said.

The fire was under control by about 10 p.m. Firefighters were on the scene until 3 a.m., Bowden said.

There were no major injuries, but some firefighters needed intravenous fluids to counteract dehydration during the hot day.

“Just a few Band-Aid things, nothing serious, fortunately,” Bowden said of the injuries.

Dan Gieger, the property manager for the complex, estimated the damage at between $3 million and $4 million. The 60-acre complex once housed the former Pittsburgh Plate Glass factory. It has since been divided into sections for storage and manufacturing, Gieger said.

Replex Plastics officials don’t know the full extent of the damages to the plant yet, but do know the entire production area was destroyed. The company owns a facility on Mount Vernon Avenue and plans to move to that site, said Pat Kula, vice president of sales and marketing.

“This building is a total loss,” Kula said. “We own this other building, now it’s just a matter of rebuilding our production capabilities in this new building.”

The plant, which is located in the park, manufactures domes for security cameras and large mirrors for stores and big vehicles such as school buses. Kula said there should be limited production in 30 days.

“It’s going to be an evolutionary process; we’re not just going to do it all overnight,” he said.

Bowden said he believes the fire might have begun in a storage facility.

“Initial crews said it was burning out there, so common sense says it started somewhere out there in the area of equipment storage,” he said.

Jay Morris, who stored his excavating equipment at the storage facility, said he lost a little more than $100,000 to the fire.

“It’s a crying shame,” he said, adding that everything he’s accumulated in the past 10 years is gone.

Morris stored a John Deere earthmover, an industrial air compressor, a motor home, a truck and a generator among other items at the facility.

“I got enough equipment to finish up this year, but I don’t know what I’ll do now,” he said.

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