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ITAMCO fire damages major piece of equipment |
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 |
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By Carol Anders
Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — A fire at Indiana Tool & Manufacturing, Inc. (ITAMCO), located at 6100 Michigan Road, late Tuesday night was able to be contained within approximately 15 mintues after firefighters from three departments arrived at the scene.
Departments from LaPaz, Polk Townships and Plymouth responded to a call near 10 p.m.
According to ITAMCO Vice-President Gary Neidig, the plant is equipped with an overhead sprinkler system that activated. He said employees — who are trained in the use of extinguishers — had attempted to extinguish the fire with six fire extinguishers.
Neidig said the fire was in a major piece of equipment that uses oil as part of the manufacturing process.
“We are waiting for experts to come in and do forensic analysis as to the exact cause,” he said.
The machine was valued at more than $1 million. Neidig said, “We have not determined the exact cause of the fire but suspect an electrical short that ignited the grinding oil.”
LaPaz fireman and officer Matthew Haskins said the department did have some ventilation problems within the area, but there were no injuries to ITAMCO employees or firefighters.
Neidig, said, “We don’t believe there was any structural damage to the building. We won’t know for sure until we can get up on to the roof to check it out.” According to Neidig, there was some smoke damage. He said, “The water went on to a concrete floor and was cleaned up in a short period of time.”
Neidig said, “There will be no layoffs due to the equipment being down. Operations are back to normal.”
He is grateful that no one was hurt.
He said, “We can fix machines, but we can’t replace people.”
ITAMCO is a custom manufacturer of gear components. The Plymouth family-owned company does business internationally.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 16 January 2009 )
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