Recycling material at plant catches fire

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A blaze damaged a recycling facility south of Albuquerque International Sunport on Sunday.

Larry Gallegos, public information officer for Bernalillo County, said piles of recycled material stacked in front of the Town Recycling warehouse caught fire at about noon. Town Recycling is located near the intersection of Broadway and Rio Bravo Boulevards.

No one was injured in the incident, Gallegos said, and the cause of the fire is under investigation.

“We have no idea how the fire started,” Gallegos said. “It was kept to the outside of the building in the parking lot … A little bit of the structure’s outside has burnt.”

Gallegos said recycled materials included paper and plastics, which resulted in a huge cloud of black smoke billowing into the air during the fire.

Gallegos said that because the materials burned in front of the warehouse, the building suffered damage on its porch area but did not completely burn down.

Although the fire department stabilized the fire, the blaze will require additional work to completely eradicate it, Gallegos said.

“When you get these bales of stuff that might burn for a couple days,” he said. “We’re going to get tractors in here and try to get that stuff pulled away. As we bring the trucks in and start to pull these bales apart, we’ll probably still have some more fire. So we’ll be putting water on this for a while.”

Gallegos said that although there had been similar fires in the facility’s area before, this was the first time that Town Recycling went ablaze.

Police had immediately alerted the owners of the facility, Gallegos said.

Although the owners were present at the scene of the blaze, they declined to be interviewed until police finish their investigation into the incident.