Fire at former Olam Spices plant in Modesto

Though an investigator had not made an official determination, torches, grinders and other equipment being used to remove machinery from the former Olam Spices & Vegetables plant in Modesto were thought to be the likely cause of a fire there Monday morning.

Firefighters were dispatched at 11:50 a.m. for the report of a fire at the shuttered food-processing plant at 705 E. Whitmore Ave. The fire was burning within a wall, so firefighters had to work their way through welded-in machinery and other obstacles to fight it, said Ceres Fire Department Battalion Chief Michael Lillie. Early on, they felt a lot of heat and discovered charred wood within the wall, but not the active fire.

At about 12:45 p.m., there were 33 fire personnel on scene, including eight engines, a truck company, three battalion chiefs, an investigator and a safety officer. Because of the “manpower-intensive work” of digging through the wall, Lillie said, additional resources were called to relieve firefighters who needed to cool off and rehydrate. Modesto, Ceres, Stanislaus Consolidated and Turlock City crews battled the fire.

Power was cut so firefighters weren’t shooting water onto live wiring; generator-powered lighting was requested to keep crews from working in pitch blackness. About 1:10 p.m., Tim Tietjen, deputy chief with Stanislaus Consolidated Fire, updated Lillie and Modesto Battalion Chief Hugo Patino, saying crews in the building successfully tore open the wall and had sufficient light to extinguish the fire. Once ventilation holes were made, smoke in the building began to dissipate because of the breeze outside, Tietjen said.

Shortly before 1:30, the fire was reported out. Most engines were cleared to leave once crews had been checked by an ambulance crew on scene.

The plant machinery was being cut out to prepare the building for sale. Last October, Olam revealed it was permanently laying off 173 employees that December “due to poor financial conditions.” The plant at that time discontinued its frozen vegetable line but said it would continue to dehydrate parsley there, keeping about 69 workers employed.

Since then, all work has ended at the 277,433-square-foot plant, which Olam West Coast Inc. bought in 2010 from ConAgra Foods.

ConAgra had purchased it from Basic Vegetable Products in 2000, and before that, it was owned by General Foods Corp.

It had been used to process various types of foods since being built 1960 on 37 acres.

An estimate of the damage caused at the facility Monday was not available midafternoon. “I know they’re trying to salvage products that have resale value,” Patino said of the damage to the building and contents, but saying anything beyond that would be guessing, he added.

This story was originally published October 12, 2015 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Fire at former Olam Spices plant in Modesto."