STAR CITY, W.Va. The Morgantown Fire Department responded to a blaze at the Star City Wastewater Treatment Plant on Leeway Street at 12:29 Thursday afternoon.
“A blower that supplies air to the membrane bioreactor system, the airation tank, caught fire,” said Greg Shellito, manager of treatment and production.
The area where the blowers are was recently improved as part of the $78 million plant upgrade.
“Those blowers are actually housed in the existing blower building that we had before the large plant upgrade,” Shellito said. “All we did was expand that building for those types of blowers.”
Shellito credited quick action by employees for limiting further damage and injury.
“We had some pretty quick-reacting people down here, and we managed to contain the fire until the fire department came down here and put it out,” Shellito said.
The damage was estimated to be in excess of $100,000 but was limited due to the quick response.
“There’s very minimal, if not any, smoke damage,” Shellito said. ”
We may have a little damage to one of the large blower fans, the exhaust fan for that building; we haven’t determined that.”
Operations at the facility will not be affected due to backup systems that are in place.
“At this point in time, we have no conclusion as to why it caught fire,” Shellito said. “It did not trip the main circuit breaker for it, so we’re not sure what happened yet.”
An error in the MECCA 911 computer-aided dispatch system alerted multiple area fire departments that provided mutual aid.
Firefighters from Star City, Granville, Westover, and Cassville also responded.