Company to conduct repairs before fire at Caldwell Darigold plant can be investigated
After a three-alarm fire did major damage to the Darigold milk processing plant in Caldwell on Tuesday afternoon, the Caldwell Fire Department said it must wait for the building to be “shored up” before it can continue its investigation into the cause.
The fire, which was reported shortly after 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the plant at 520 Albany St., led to the evacuation of around 80 employees, according to Steve Donahue, Cadlwell deputy fire chief. No employees were injured, he said, but one firefighter suffered a minor injury on Tuesday evening.
Donahue said the roof in the center of the building, near where the fire likely originated, collapsed during the blaze. Before his department can continue its investigation, Darigold engineers need to repair any structural issues.
“Until that gets shored up, there’s really nothing we can do,” Donahue told the Idaho Statesman on Wednesday.
Darigold’s engineers and contractors met with structural engineers from the city of Caldwell and the fire marshal on Wednesday morning, according to Donahue, and the company is procuring construction cranes to work on the building.
“They’ve done several walk-throughs of the areas that they can get at, so they’re well aware of what they need to do,” Donahue said. “They’re very responsive ... they’re really a good community partner.”
Along with Caldwell’s crews, roughly 50 firefighters responded to the blaze from departments in Middleton, Star, Nampa, Meridian, Eagle, Parma, Wilder, Upper Deer Flat, Melba and Marsing, Donahue said. At the peak, four trucks — three tower trucks and one ladder truck — were shooting water on the blaze, likely using at least 4,000 gallons a minute, Donahue said.
Before Caldwell fire even got to the scene, firefighters called a second alarm — requesting that additional units respond — based on the amount of smoke they could see, he said. The third alarm was called shortly after that.
The building is constructed largely of wood, brick and metal. When parts of it collapsed, it pushed some of the brick exterior out, which “caused stability issues with the walls,” Donahue said.
The overall structural issues prevented firefighters from going inside, making it more difficult to extinguish the fire.
“When the roof collapsed, we can’t reach everything,” Donahue said. “So we weren’t able to send anybody inside because, A, the roof had partially collapsed, and B, the walls were not structurally sound to be working around, so we had to get ladder trucks out.”
The Caldwell Fire Department began sending other departments home at around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, when the fire had been controlled. Firefighters from Caldwell stayed at the scene until around 10 p.m. and returned at around 1 a.m., and were back again Wednesday morning to put out some small spot fires, according to Donahue.
The Darigold plant, which employs around 120 people to process dairy products including dried milk and butter, was built in 1930, Donahue said. The center of the building, where the fire likely originated and where hoppers store milk as part of the production of dry milk, “is pretty well destroyed,” he said, but other parts of the building are still intact.
The plant will remain closed while the cause of the fire is investigated and while repairs are done, according to an emailed statement from the company.
“Our hearts go out to our farmer-owners who depend on this plant for their livelihood,” the statement from Darigold said. “We are doing everything we can to re-route their milk to other facilities and we are exploring other ways we can support our members until the plant reopens. We will also be offering employees temporary work assignments in other nearby facilities.”
Darigold is a subsidiary of the Northwest Dairy Association, a dairy farm cooperative owned by about 430 families in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The cooperative is headquartered in Seattle.
