On Sunday afternoon fire swept through plantations to the north of Morwell and came to the boundaries of the Australian Paper Maryvale pulp mill. Source: ABC News
After a night-long battle CFA crews extinguished the blaze and only smoldering piles of logs and woodchips remain.
Embers landing in some of the mill’s log and woodchip piles started fire inside the Maryvale mill.
“Really we went into emergency mode and it was more important to deal with the emergency than to deal with ongoing production issues, so we took some of the machines down at that time,” said Mark Nelson, manager of human resources for Australian Paper at the Maryvale mill.
Fire made its way inside the mill via conveyor belts and also burnt electrical wires inside the Maryvale plant.
For the past couple of days fire crews from Australian Paper have been turning over log piles and wood chip heaps to look for smoldering.
“We’re still doing some repair work in one of the pulp lines but that will be back up this afternoon,” said Nelson.
The mill is fully operational but the damage bill is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We’re very pleased that there’s been no significant injuries during this process,” said Nelson.
The fire has moved away from the mill towards CFA containment lines in the surrounding plantations.
