By Sahar Foladi
Firefighters battled a factory fire in Hallam on Thursday 5 January.
Thick black smoke engulfed the sky of Hallam as emergency services attended to the incident on Westpool Drive.
Andrew McCartney, acting assistant chief fire officer for Southern district to Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV), said the factory fire involved hydrocarbon chemicals.
“Isohexane was where we believe the initial fire began, which is a class three inflammable liquid, and had spread to adhesives that is also in the same premise.
“It was a fast developing fire – it was encompassing the whole premise initially. A lot of it was an external fire attack.”
Mr McCartney said the adhesives carried the fire very easily.
“It made it quite large and at a rapid development,” Mr McCartney said.
It took 14 units from CFA and Fire Rescue Victoria and an hour and half of work with firefighters on cranes with hoses to bring the fire under control.
“It is under control now. We still have some concerns for an area in the building that hasn’t been impacted by fire. We just want to make sure that there are no chemicals stored in that area,” Mr McCartney said on the day.
There were no injuries, according to Mr McCartney, and all firefighters were safe.
“We have medical monitoring to make sure that they don’t have heat exhaustion or anything.”
Police had closed the area to keep the public safe and let the firefighters carry out their job comfortably.
Victoria Emergency, CFA, Ambulance and FRV all attended the incident.
