SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — There have been two fires within four months at an electronics recycling plant owned by a company called MTech in Salt Lake City.
“I was down here back in May covering this fire, just videotaping it, just for the heck of it … same business,” said Tim Pulley, who lives in West Valley City.
Back in May, a pile of recycling materials caught on fire. It was the same story on Tuesday.
“Contents can be anything from electronics, electronic waste, to cardboard, to wood. It’s kind of deep-piled,” said Cpt. Chad Jepperson of the Salt Lake City Fire Department. “We’ve had a fire here before and it’s very similar to what is burning.”
SLC recycling fire
To many firefighters, it’s no secret that electronics are a common culprit for a fire’s cause.
“From a pocket-sized calculator to a telephone, all the way up to a vehicle, what you’re dealing with are several smaller components, each of which has the ability to become hazardous or combustible in the right circumstances,” said Jon Smith, a public information officer for the North Tooele Fire District.
Sometimes those circumstances could just be that your electronic device overheats.
“Sometimes it just means you’re dealing with something called thermal runaway and that’s when that heat becomes more manageable than the product was originally designed to handle, and in that case, fuel can be pretty much anything that can be burned,” Smith said.
Which is why making sure your devices are far enough away from flammable material is extremely important.
“If you’re dealing with lithium-ion batteries, you know you want to make sure you’re charging them on a solid surface, you’re keeping them from combustible materials, like paint, fuel, paint thinner, anything like that,” said Smith.
If your devices are ready to be thrown away, don’t just throw them in the nearest trash can you find.
“You want to make sure that you’re sending those to the proper place. You’re not just dumping those batteries off into a trash can, you’re not taking them to a facility that doesn’t handle those types of products,” said Smith.
Firefighters also say to make sure that you use chargers that come with the product that you buy rather than buying it from a third-party to prevent devices from unnecessarily overheating.
