Six-hour Port of Vancouver grain terminal fire causes little damage

Six-hour Port of Vancouver grain terminal fire causes little damage A fire in a Port of Vancouver, Wash. grain terminal caused no injuries or structural damage to the facility despite taking local firefighters more than six hours to extinguish.
   The smoldering grain and grain-dust fire at the port's Terminal 2 grain facility was first reported just after 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
   Firefighters from the Vancouver Fire Department worked until about 1 a.m. Thursday morning to knock down the fire that was isolated to a large tower at the facility. The fire, reported VFD officials, did not spread to the facility's elevator or more than 250 concrete storage silos.
   VFD officials told The Columbian that it took more than three hours to develop a plan to battle the fire safely. Normal water-spraying methods could have spread glowing embers into other areas leading to a spreading of the fire or even a grain-dust explosion, fire officials said.
   A ship tied up at the facility was not loaded at the time of the fire and was not affected.
   In May 2005, explosions in two of the terminal's grain dust collector bins caused $5 million in damages and shuttered the facility's grain elevator for nearly five months. The elevator, originally built in 1934 and still one of the largest on the West Coast, has a storage capacity of 5 million bushels. In 2005. Sixteen percent of the nation's grain exports moved through the Terminal 2 elevator, representing about 70 percent of the 2005 total tonnage volume for the port.