THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 10, 1994 TAG: 9412100258
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
A two-alarm fire Friday morning damaged one of two ship loaders at Norfolk Southern Corp.'s coal pier on the Elizabeth River.
It will take about two weeks to repair the loader, delaying some coal shipments from the facility, Norfolk Southern spokesman Bob Fort said.
About 45 Norfolk firefighters in eight firetrucks responded at 10:30 a.m. and found that the loader's conveyor belt had ignited coal dust, Assistant Chief Louis M. Johnson said.
Fortunately, the loader's fire-suppression system had confined the blaze to the mechanics of the conveyor belt and away from a loading ship, Johnson said. Firefighters brought the blaze under control in about an hour, he said.
One firefighter injured his ankle.
The repairs could delay coal dumpings at Pier 6 at Lamberts Point by three to four days, Fort said. He said the fire caused about $170,000 in damage.
The cause of the fire, which started in the loader's conveyer system, was not known Friday afternoon. But the blaze was similar to another fire there in February 1993. That fire erupted in the loader's conveyor when a roller locked up and heated the belt fabric to the burning point. The three-alarm blaze burned for an hour, threatening a ship being loaded, before being put out by firefighters and the Coast Guard.
The loader is a metal tower with a large conveyor belt and boomlike loading chute. Coal moves from the pier up the conveyor belt and into the long chute, which funnels the coal into a ship's hold.
Norfolk Southern had dumped just 23 of 63,000 tons of coal bound for South Korea in the hold of the Korean-owned, Panamanian-registered Innovator when the fire started.
The 160,000-ton collier was shifted up the pier, away from the fire and to the other loader.
The fire delayed the loading of the ship by a couple of hours, said Wilson J. Browning Jr., president of W.J. Browning Co., the ship's agent.
The delays that will be caused by the fire damage come at a busy time in the coal pier's operation. In the next two weeks, 19 ships are expected to be loaded at the pier and more orders are likely, Norfolk Southern spokesman Rob Chapman said.
Norfolk Southern expects to load 2.6 million tons of coal for export at the pier this month. The company will operate the undamaged loader around the clock until replacing the conveyor belt on the damaged one and fixing and testing whatever else is broken on the loader. MEMO: Staff writer Jon Frank contributed to this report.
KEYWORDS: FIRE
by CNB