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BENWOOD — Black smoke could be seen for miles Saturday evening as stacks of vehicles caught fire near the Ohio River in Benwood at the Strauss Industries metal recycling plant. The fire started at about 5:30 p.m. and continued burning as the sun set.
No injuries were reported in the blaze, as Benwood residents looked on from a nearby hillside neighborhood. One resident said he had just left The Highlands and could see black smoke billowing over the hillside from outside the sports complex.
Benwood Fire Chief Garson Taylor said they had many local area fire departments assisting with battling the blaze.
"We have a second round tanker task force. We have a lot of units on scene," Taylor explained. He said there were around "eight stacks of cars fully involved" on the scene and he was unaware of the cause of the fire.
Just after 8 p.m., Taylor said they had the fire under control, as they had it surrounded with many area departments that continued to douse the stacks of burning cars with water. He said Benwood and Wheeling fire departments were assisting in spraying water on the fire from boats positioned on the river.
Taylor said at one time they had concerns about the fire possibly spreading to nearby CSX train cars that were holding "fuel tanks," but felt they were able to contain the fire from spreading to that area. He said the train cars were positioned about 500 yards from the fire. He said CSX officials advised them the train cars were loaded with "some sort of fuel."
He said they planned to use large heavy loading equipment at Strauss Industries to begin removing vehicles from the pile to assist in putting the fire out.
Taylor said they had no plans for evacuating residents from the nearby neighborhood.
"We got everything covered right now. I don't foresee it going any further," said Taylor, as firefighters had the fire knocked down to a section of burned out vehicles.
Cody Grall, an employee of Strauss, said he was on his way back from The Highlands when he saw smoke billowing from the scene. He said he decided to go to his workplace to see if there was any way he could assist those on the scene.