STA, 14 June 2019 - A fire broke out at an insulation facility near the town of Cerknica in south-western Slovenia Thursday evening. A group of workers and a massive effort by firefighters seem to have prevented the worst. The fire was brought under control within an hour and preliminary tests show that life-threatening substances had not been released in the air.
Nonetheless, several schools in the area and a kindergarten remain closed today and people are advised to be cautious until results of more detailed tests are known.
People are also advised not to eat vegetables from their gardens at this point or if they do, wash them thoroughly. Moreover, tap water must be boiled before consumption because of the extraordinary demand for water during the intervention, which put an excessive strain on the water supply system.
Due to the smoke from the fire, increased levels of dust particles remain in the air, however, initial analyses show no major cause for concern.
The Environment Agency and the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) have already sampled air and soil in the area for analysis and will perform follow-up tests in the coming week.
Prime Minister Marjan Šarec visited the site of the fire this morning, saying that the key thing at this point was that the locals were safe. He praised all those involved in the intervention for their swift and effective response.
Cerknica Mayor Marko Rupar said that the fire had been under control within an hour. According to Srečko Šestan, the chief of the national Civil Protection and Disaster Relief Administration, last night's intervention was massive. At one point, there were as many as 450 people at the site, he told the newspaper Delo.
Talking to Šarec this morning, he said that the fire had been under control "in a flash" and that he had been "pleasantly surprised" when he had arrived at the site last night.
He said that everything had gone smoothly last night. The fire brigades were familiar with the plant, because three drills had been conducted at the facility prior to the fire.
"Now it is up to the police and the forensics to find out what caused the fire," the prime minister said as he visited the burnt-down plant of Fragmat, a thermal insulation panel maker.
Fortunately, the fire claimed no lives. Rupar told the STA last night that five workers were nearby when the fire broke out at about 8pm. They managed to escape the flames and also remove from the area substances that could cause explosions.
The fire broke out on the styrodur panel machine and then spread onto the warehouse, encompassing a total of 40,000 square metres.
The damage is not yet known, but inspecting the site with Šarec, Rupar said that the plant, built in 2012, was a EUR 20 million investment. It is also estimated that another EUR 5 million of material has been destroyed by the fire.
Fragmat management board member Dušan Žužek told the STA that the fire would have caused a massive loss of production, adding that the damage would be very high.
Šarec said that the fire was a "tragedy" for the owner, as this was a "state-of-the-art insulation material production plant".
The village of Podskrajnik, where the Fragmat plant is located, is only some 20 kilometres away from Vrhnika, where, two years ago, a massive fire broke out at a chemical-waste management plant.
Šestan told Delo that the authorities had learnt a lot since the Kemis fire. They were now better at informing the locals and better at coordinating their tasks, and thus more effective.
Environment Minister Simon Zajc meanwhile said that the fire did not involve any substances that could cause major environmental damage. "This was not like Kemis, the fire with which many are drawing parallels to. But because of Kemis, the intervention here was so fast."
He said the water waste from the intervention was what worried him the most, but fortunately the firefighters were able to put in place water catchers, preventing pollution of nearby waterways.
The location of the fire
"Preliminary analysis conducted by a lab team on the ground show no reason to expect any major pollution, which is good new," said Zajc.
Meanwhile, Labour Minister Ksenija Klampfer has scheduled a meeting with Žužek for next week to see how best help the company. She moreover called on the local unit of the Employment Service and social services to do the same.
Fragmat technical director and the owner's son Rok Žgajnar said that crisis meetings are being called for next week to see how to proceed. The company was insured but Žgajnar said they did not know when they would rebuild the plant, if at all.
