A Monday morning fire at Catalyst’s Snowflake Paper Mill destroyed nearly half of the mill’s waste paper inventory.
A call came in at 11:45 a.m. on April 18 that there was a fire in the storage yard of Catalyst Paper Mill. The mill’s emergency team responded immediately, as well as did fire departments from Snowflake, Taylor, Pinetop, Lakeside and Heber.
“With the winds as high as they were there was concern of spreading,” said Snowflake Fire Chief Pat Hancock. “Once we got there, we were able to contain it.”
“Spread of the fire was kept to a minimum, but we’re sure dumping a lot of water out there,” said the chief.
In the evening winds eased up, enabling firefighters to get the fire under control. “We hauled paper all night long to the dump site, putting water on it all night long,” said Chief Hancock.
At press time, they were able to cut resources on scene to two Snowflake trucks and a Vernon truck. The cause of the fire was unknown, but it was under control, though it was smoldering.
The fire took approximately 14,000 tons or half of Catalyst’s waste paper inventory.
Company officials said the mill would remain down until the full extent of damage to its waste paper feed system is known. Paper production was expected to resume later this week.
“The physical assets of the mill appear to be protected, but more importantly, the human assets of our facility were protected, as we have not had any incidents reported from this,” said Jerry Keeley of Catalyst Human Resources, who also noted that the firm appreciated the support of the emergency response teams.
The Snowflake mill has annual production capacity of 337,000 tons of recycled newsprint an
