By Star Weekly
A blaze has broken out at a warehouse belonging to a trouble-plagued Melbourne recycler, in what is at least the tenth major factory fire at a waste facility since October last year.
More than 40 firefighters spent 45 minutes battling to contain the fire at SKM Recycling’s Laverton North plant after it was first reported about 5.30pm on Monday.
Crews arrived to find the fire in a processing machine surrounded by bales of waste.
The Metropolitan Fire Brigade scrambled 11 trucks, two aerial units and a rescue unit to the Gilbertson Road site.
All staff inside the building were evacuated safely, but paramedics remained at the scene to assess evacuees and firefighters.
The investigation could lead to more trouble for the notorious recycler, which was this year fined more than $16,000 for keeping dangerous stockpiles of combustible waste at its Coolaroo and Laverton North recycling factories.
A wall of recycling material, photographed inside one of SKM’s western Melbourne facilities the day before it was shut down by the EPA.
That followed a devastating fire at its Coolaroo site in 2017 that burned for two weeks and sent thick plumes of toxic smoke across Melbourne.
The Environment Protection Authority banned the two sites from accepting waste in February, triggering a recycling crisis across Melbourne as several municipalities were forced to dump thousands of tonnes of recyclable material in landfill.
That ban was lifted in March.
“We are satisfied that SKM now meets the conditions outlined in our notices and is again compliant,” said EPA chief executive Cathy Wilkinson at the time.
“However, EPA will continue to inspect the Laverton North and Coolaroo sites to ensure they remain compliant.”
Waste and chemical fires have become a regular and dangerous concern for Melburnians and MFB firefighters.
A toxic chemical inferno at the Bradbury Industrial Services factory in Campbellfield in early April needed 175 firefighters to bring it under control.
That was the eighth major factory fire in Melbourne in just seven months.
The ninth came only weeks later when 30 firefighters were called to a fire of recycled car parts in Tottenham.
Fire crews managed to control the fire within about 15 minutes but the MFB issued an advice message for 12 western suburbs.
Last year, a massive fire broke out at a West Footscray factory that smouldered for days and contaminated the nearby Stony Creek.
Scores of dead fish, eels and birds have washed up along the shores of the creek and the mouth of the Yarra River near Spotswood, Newport and Williamstown since the blaze.
-By Zach Hope, The Age
