Ammonia threat contained at burning Oregon seafood plant, officials say

By Eduardo Cuevas, Jillian Sykes, CNN

(CNN) — The threat of an ammonia leak from a burning seafood plant in a coastal Oregon city has been contained after firefighters worked to control the blaze, local officials said Sunday afternoon.

The incident occurred at Pacific Seafood in Newport, Oregon, just before 9 a.m. local time, officials said. Thick plumes of smoke billowed over the quiet fishing town Sunday morning, which is located 90 miles southwest of Portland and has just over 10,000 residents.

The fire inside the freezer facility caused a partial building collapse. The ensuing threat of ammonia leaking from tanks stored inside prompted initial evacuation alerts that soon grew to include large swaths of the small city that local officials tout as the heart of the Oregon Coast. Newport is a major producer of Dungeness crab and shrimp, and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, in the city, draws thousands of visitors annually.

The fire was ongoing Sunday afternoon, but the evacuation areas were reduced to just a couple blocks around the facility – a largely commercial area – mainly due to smoke, city officials told reporters in a news briefing.

But the blaze is likely to result in economic impacts as officials continue to assess damages due to Pacific Seafood’s status as a major employer in the city, said Newport Mayor Jan Kaplan.

On Sunday morning, city officials had urged people to stay inside if they were in Newport, which is around 9 square miles.

“If you must go outside, you should wear a mask,” a statement from city officials said.

Officials initially identified low traces of ammonia in the smoke from the ongoing fire, John Fuller, a city spokesperson, said.

The building that caught fire has been in operation since 1946, officials said. The roughly 11,000-square-foot building is a freezer facility, a similar type of food storage to the cold-storage warehouse in Los Angeles that caught fire last summer and burned for days. The cleanup of the aftermath took more than two months.

It’s unclear how the Newport fire started, but between 30 and 40 people were inside the building when the flames broke out, Fuller said. One firefighter was taken to the hospital after responding to the fire due to exhaustion, officials said. There were no other reported injuries, Fuller confirmed.

Newport Fire Chief Rob Murphy said firefighters worried the building could fully collapse and damage ammonia tanks, causing a dangerous leak. As of Sunday afternoon, the threat of collapse has been reduced and the tanks are stabilized and will remain so, he said.

Anhydrous ammonia is used in refrigeration at the facility, the Oregon State Fire Marshal said in a news release. State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said the ammonia tank was found and did not appear to be punctured or leaking.

The Oregon State Fire Marshal earlier said it responded to the incident with a hazmat team because of the chemicals inside the facility. The team is using specialized equipment to monitor the air and modeling where there might be impacts to help with evacuations, state officials said in an update.

A spokesperson for Pacific Seafood said in a statement the company was not aware of injuries and all employees have been accounted for.

“Pacific Seafood is devastated by today’s fire in Newport,” Ashton Meier, the company’s vice president of resource sales and processing, said in a statement. “Although we are still working with emergency response officials to determine the full extent of the damage, we expect that it will be a major loss.”

The fire initially prompted evacuation notices in the area surrounding the processing plant, affecting hundreds of people, before being reduced to the couple of blocks later in the day. Officials had said the evacuations were strongly recommended but not mandatory.

Oregon resident Coby Bertalotto shared videos with CNN showing a cloud of smoke over Newport.

“Driving through that thick smoke … It was thick enough that I couldn’t see the side of the road,” Bertalotto said. “I was very cautious.”

He described the smell outside as “rubbery,” affecting an area with several tourist attractions such as candy stores, bars and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Exposure to high levels of ammonia in the air may cause irritation to the skin, eyes, throat, and lungs and cause coughing and burns, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Some people with asthma may be more sensitive, the agency said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Nic F. Anderson and Maria Aguilar Prieto contributed to this report.