Overheating cause of sawmill blaze?

Press, 19 February 1987, Page 3

Overheating cause of sawmill blaze?

Timaru reporter

The management of Wilson Bros sawmill at Washdyke believes that overheating on one of the head rig bandsaws caused the fire which destroyed the mill and caused damage costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The fire erupted late on Tuesday afternoon and quickly engulfed one 50mlong building, sending eight workmen fleeing for their lives.

The mill was fully insured but the manager, Mr Peter Barrow, said that with the wide range of machinery in the mill — loaders, two bandsaws, band resaw, press bench, and chain conveyers — a figure would be hard to determine. However, he estimated the cost of damage in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tasman Lumber, a subsidiary of Fletcher Challenge, bought the sawmill last October and two months later announced it

would close it with the loss of about 30 jobs. On Tuesday the 18 workers left at the site were marking off the days until the March 31 shutdown but now for some of them, it may be an earlier redundancy.

Mr Barrow said he did not know whether the company would want to keep the men on until March 31 but clean-up work would probably take some time. Five men will be employed after March 31 since the site will still be used as a timber yard.

Drams full of chemicals used for treating timber exploded in the fire. Five firemen were admitted to Timaru Hospital on Tuesday evening suffering from nausea and headaches. After observation they were discharged from hospital yesterday.

Four Timaru fire engines and one from Temuka attended the blaze and managed to have it under control in half an hour.,