A large pile of scrapped cars at a recycling plant in Stonecrest caught on fire Tuesday afternoon, sending a plume of smoke hundreds of feet into the sky.
Employees at the Encore Recycling plant off Chapman Road spotted the blaze shortly before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. By that point, smoke was visible for miles.
DeKalb County Fire Capt. Jaeson Daniels told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the blaze took several hours to extinguish, and firefighters were still putting out hotspots Wednesday morning. No one was injured.
“If you can just imagine a mound of metal, cars, parts and whatever else they had in that mound of stuff was burning,” Daniels said. “It took quite a while to get (the fire) out.”
Credit: JOHN SPINK/JSPINK@AJC.COM
Credit: JOHN SPINK/JSPINK@AJC.COM
The pile of car parts was taller than the firetrucks that responded to the scene. Daniels said firefighters from Walton County, Newton County and a unit from Stone Mountain Park helped battle the blaze. Firefighters used equipment from Encore, such as processing cranes, to spread out the materials to better locate hotspots and extinguish the fire.
“All the iron was burning,” Daniels said. “Also the cars still have fluid in them. They do empty them to the best of their ability, but they still have residual fuel oil and whatnot inside those vehicles. So of course all of that was burning.”
The cause of the incident has not been determined and is under investigation.
Founded in 2013 by two brothers, Encore recycles scrap metal from industrial sites and junked vehicles. The company has received several Clean Water Act violations since April 2018, according to Environmental Protection Agency documents. Those violations typically involve how chemicals are stored at industrial facilities. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division identified seven violations during that period, including one between April and August this year.
The incident comes within a week of a large fire at a Clayton County recycling plant, which shut down Forest Parkway for roughly 16 hours. No one was injured during the incident, which took place at the Amerigo Metal Recycling plant.
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