A small paper fire broke out at Leatherback Industries at 10:30
a.m. Wednesday and was quickly brought under control by employees,
Hollister fire officials said. No injuries were reported.
When the Hollister Fire Department arrived on the scene, several
Leatherback employees were on the roof with water hoses and were
containing the blaze, HFD Capt. Leo Alverez said.
A small paper fire broke out at Leatherback Industries at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and was quickly brought under control by employees, Hollister fire officials said. No injuries were reported.
When the Hollister Fire Department arrived on the scene, several Leatherback employees were on the roof with water hoses and were containing the blaze, HFD Capt. Leo Alverez said.
“They had a good knock down when we got there,” Alverez said. “They had it under control and it was not traveling.”
Leatherback is located at the corner of Meridian and McCray streets.
Fire officials said they could only speculate on the cause of the fire and will continue to investigate the origin.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Dave Kirkham, director of marketing and general manager of Leatherback Industries. “It could have been spontaneous combustion caused by excessive heat, maybe because there was some paper on hot metal on a hot black roof, or someone could have flicked a cigarette over the fence. We may never know what happened.”
Alverez doubted the blaze was caused by a cigarette, but confirmed that the fire started on the roof.
“We have not pinned it down and we don’t want to take any guesses,” he said.
Most of the damage was to PVC pipes that melted from the heat, Kirkham said.
“We lost maybe two to three hours of production with the cost of the damage around $100,” he said.
After the fire was extinguished, the fire department spent about 90 minutes peeling back the roof construction searching for any smoldering debris.
“If we do not do a good, we could have a fire tonight,” Alverez said.
Alverez said the HFD has responded to past fires at Leatherback that were caused by radiating heat from the plant’s machinery.
The location of the fire was in an area where employees were not working, Kirkham said, adding employees and the HFD reacted quickly to extinguish the blaze.
