Buckhorn doesn’t skip a beat after fire

The day officially set aside for Americans to give thanks is still weeks away. On Monday, however, Freddie Burgess was quick to give thanks that a Sunday night fire at Buckhorn Rubber did not cause more damage.
“The fire was much smaller than what probably ran through my mind to start with,” said Burgess, Buckhorn’s plant manager, noting that production was underway at the plant Monday.
Burgess expressed his appreciation to the Hannibal Fire Department for its quick response to the fire call, which came shortly before 9 p.m.
“They do a lot of training here, working extensively with our maintenance personnel and administrators, so they know where things are. In fact they did a walk through just a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
According to Bill Madore, deputy fire chief, when firefighters rolled up on the scene fire and smoke were visible.
“The biggest obstacle we faced last night was ventilating the building, being a large factory. It took a while to get the heat and smoke out of the building to further investigate what was the root cause of the problem,” said Madore, noting that a total of 20 fire personnel were called to the scene.
Madore says the fire was under control in approximately 15 minutes.
“The building itself sustained minor damage. Mostly what we had was smoke. The biggest exposure that we had was the water damage from the sprinklers and our efforts in putting out the fire,” he said.
Almost as soon as the fire was out, cleanup inside the facility was underway, according to Burgess. Consequently, no production time was lost.
“We have good associates,” he said. “Because of that our customers did not suffer any loss.”
An investigator from the state fire marshal’s office was called in. The source of the fire was one of the plant’s rubber injection mold machines, which had been turned on by a member of the maintenance crew to allow it to warm up ahead of the arrival of a work shift later in the evening.
No Buckhorn personnel were injured in the fire. One Hannibal firefighter was treated for minor injuries at Hannibal Regional Hospital and was released, according to Madore.