11:45 AM PDT on Saturday, June 24, 2006

By KRISTINA BRENNEMAN, kgw.com Staff

CANBY, Ore. -- A major fire erupted at a biodiesel manufacturing plant Friday afternoon in Canby, destroying one of its production buildings, firefighters said.

kgw.com/Canby Fire Dist.

A Canby firefighters sprays still smoking beams at a Canby biodiesel manufacturing facility.

The 275-gallon plastic tanks holding nearly 500 gallons of biodiesel melted in the fire, causing the combustible liquid to spill and freely burn, said Division Chief Troy Buzalsky of the Canby Fire District.

"When we arrived it looked like a fuel refinery fire," said Captain Val Codino of Canby Fire. "Once we found out that we were battling Biodiesel, all the black smoke and intense heat we were encountering made since."

The chemicals made it extremely difficult to fight the fire, he said. "We kept sweeping the fire down, and it kept flaring right back," said Codino. "The fire was burning with tremendous intensity, more so than would normally be encounter in a typical structure fire."

It took firefighters about 45 minutes to control the blaze, which heavily burned one barn and at one point, threatened a barn 30 feet to the south of the South Heinze Road location, Buzalsky said.

Jeff Bryant, owner and operator of Sunbreak Biofuels, manufactures biodiesel and brokers biodiesel at the site.

Firefighters believe there were approximately 1,000 gallons of biodiesel at the location, and as much as 300 gallons of methanol, Buzalsky said.

None of the methanol was ignited in the fire, he said.

The firefighters later determined the biodiesel did not pose much environmental risk since it is 100 percent biodegradable.

Fire investigators do not believe the biodiesel manufacturing process started the blaze.