OSWEGO – On Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 10:06 p.m., a fire alarm at the Novelis plant on county Route 1A in Oswego was called into the Oswego County E-911 Center. Within two minutes, mutual aid was requested and the nature of the call was re-classified as a structure fire.
A “three-alarm” fire refers to the number of resources (equipment and personnel) requested to respond to the incident. Twenty-six fire departments answered the call to this fire, with 175 career and volunteer firefighters either participating on scene or providing stand-by coverage for those departments working the fire scene at Novelis.
The particular challenge here was extinguishing the roof fire. For safety reasons and a partial collapse, we had to rely on ladder trucks. Additional resources were brought in and, due to the large number of ladder trucks and ground monitors that were utilized, a tanker task force was requested.
While it was a long night for all of the first responders, the coordinated fire response was very well run overall. We’re all grateful for the considerable mutual aid our neighboring cities, towns and villages offered. Thanks to the additional equipment and manpower, only one building sustained significant damage while the remainder of the plant was saved.
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