Smoke hangs over Rockford after fire

The town of Rockford lay under a pall of smoke Friday as the smoldering remains of a Seeds Inc. warehouse continued to burn. Fire officials expect the pile of debris to continue producing smoke and occasional flames for several days.

The fire appears to be accidental, said Kevin Miller, deputy fire marshal for Valley Fire. The fire began about 8 p.m. Thursday as a truck parked next to the warehouse was being loaded with ground material to be mixed into a hydroseeding straw the company makes. “It started in the trailer of the truck,” he said. “Most likely it has to do with the equipment.”

District 11 Fire Chief Stan Seehorn was close by when the alarm was sounded. “We could see part of the flames from two miles away,” he said.

The warehouse, located between two other buildings, already was fully aflame when firefighters arrived. Seehorn said the firefighting effort quickly became a fight to keep the flames from spreading to the other buildings.

There are no fire hydrants in the area, so firefighters were tapping the Rockford water supply. “They were using the water faster than Rockford can produce it,” said Miller. Water tenders from half a dozen fire districts were called in to pump water. In the end about 100 firefighters responded to the fire.

Paul Dashiell, one of several farmers who own Seeds Inc., said he was impressed with the response. He estimates that at the peak of the fire, crews were pumping as much as 5,000 gallons of water a minute from a steady stream of water tenders. “They were lined up down the highway,” Dashiell said. “It’s extremely impressive.”

The smoky debris will be monitored 24 hours a day until it goes out, said Seehorn. “We can’t bring enough water in to put it out,” he said. “Just contain it is all we can do.”

The warehouse was full of hydroseeding straw. The product includes, among other things, straw that is baled off the fields of local grass growers who can no longer burn their fields. The product is the latest effort to find a profitable way to use the straw.

For several years Seeds Inc. co-owned Pacific Northwest Fiber with the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. The company, based in Plummer, processed the straw and made it into strawboard. The business closed in 2002 after losing money for more than two years.

The new hydroseeding straw is mixed with water, grass seed and fertilizer before being applied to the ground. “It eliminates erosion,” Dashiell said.

The company had been building up its inventory in preparation for spring. About 25 semitrailer loads of the product were lost, and it will take about two weeks to replace it once the plant is up and running again. “It’s going to make things difficult for a while,” said general manager Richard Cramer. “We’ll be out of action for a couple weeks.”

Dashiell said it’s likely the whole plant would have burned if not for the quick response by firefighters. “The main part of the warehouse got saved,” he said. “It was just storage.”