Black smoke billows above flames at a plastics recycling plant in Summerville, Ga. The blaze started Friday evening and more than 100 firefighters were still fighting it on Saturday night, local official said.
Photo courtesy The Summerville NewsFirefighters were getting ahead of the enormous fire at a plastics recycling plant in Summerville, Ga., by late Saturday afternoon, but the environmental impacts were still to be measured.
More than 100 firefighters from multiple agencies still were pouring water on the blaze Saturday, said Eddie Henderson, Chattooga Emergency Management Agency director.
“We’re on the downhill slide,” Henderson said late Saturday afternoon. “It’s still a fire, and it’s still a hazardous fire.”
People living around the plant who were evacuated Friday night were allowed home briefly to pick up clothes and tend to pets, Henderson said.
He wasn’t sure when the evacuation – a quarter-mile in most areas and a half-mile to the east, or downwind – would be lifted, but said results of EPA air monitoring were “excellent.”