A Tyson Foods poultry plant in Dawson, Georgia, will not be in operation for the remainder of the week after a fire and subsequent ammonia leak occurred there around 9 p.m. on April 18.
The poultry plant fire took place in the dock area of the facility, Tyson Foods spokesman Worth Sparkman said, and that incident involved the release of ammonia, which is used as a refrigerant at the plant.
According to Sparkman, multiple fire departments from the area quickly responded to the incident, and no injuries resulted. The poultry plant ammonia leak was isolated, and Tyson Foods officials have been working to determine the root cause and when the facility may be able to again be operational.
“We’re evaluating the damage and will determine when we might resume operations sometime next week,” Sparkman stated in an email.
Homes in the area evacuated
The situation not only led to the evacuation of the poultry plant, but also at about 40 area homes, Terrell County Emergency Management Agency Director Billy McClung told WALB. The home evacuations were done as a result of the ammonia leak, although the amount of ammonia that was released is believed to have been small.
First responders also went door-to-door in outlying areas to advise residents to be on standby.
Terrell County schools announced that school would be closed on April 19 as a precautionary measure.
Earlier Tyson Foods fires
Fires have occurred at several Tyson Foods facilities over the past couple of years.
In January, a small fire took place at the Tyson Foods cooked poultry plant in Green Forest, Arkansas. That fire was believed to have started accidentally in a drum that separates the breader from the oil, Green Forest Fire Chief Tim Howard said at the time.
There were also a pair of fires at Tyson Foods poultry plants during the second quarter of the company’s 2017 fiscal year. A fire in Vienna, Georgia, involved the company’s labeling department and an upstairs box room, while another fire in Vicksburg, Mississippi, involved a boiler building adjacent to the main plant. Tyson Foods CEO Tom Hayes reported in that quarter’s earnings call that those two incidents hurt profitability for Tyson’s poultry segment.
On January 3, 2017, the company’s pork processing plant in Storm Lake, Iowa, was the scene of a fire that started in the byproduct rendering area of the facility.
No injuries were reported as a result of any of those Tyson Foods fires.
