Fire at potato plant leads to evacuation
Warden residents allowed home early Friday
Last updated 1/22/2021 at 1:09pm
WARDEN - Residents of Warden were allowed to return to their homes around 1 a.m. Friday morning, Jan. 22, following a Level 3 Evacuation notice.
The Level 3 Evacuation was called for around 8:30 p.m. Jan. 21 for areas west of Road U-SE and south of SR 170 in Warden, due to risk of an ammonia tank explosion when a fire broke out in a Washington Potato Company plant dehydrator at 1900 W. First Street.
"There was a fear that a large ammonia storage tank would explode due to the fire," Grant County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kyle Foreman said Friday morning. "Thankfully, that did not happen."
Foreman said the fire quickly extended to the structure and the contents of the structure.
"That required additional fire resources from all over Grant County and some from Adams County as well," Foreman said. "Nobody was hurt, thankfully."
Firefighters remained on the scene all night, continuing to extinguish the fire.
"It appeared that much of that operation is starting to wind down," Foreman said Friday morning. "A lot of the resources from out of the Warden area have returned home or are returning home."
Firefighters responded from Warden, Moses Lake, Royal Slope, Ephrata and Othello.
Foreman said the evacuation affected an estimated one third of Warden's population of about 2800 people, or several hundred people.
"The evacuation went quickly, for many reasons," Foreman said. "One, there were a lot of law enforcement officers at the scene who were able to go door-to-door to warn anyone in harm's way. We also used our mass notification systems; our social media; and we have a reverse-911 system that was able to call people who registered for the service, to let them know about the evacuation."
Foremen said Warden Police officers as well as Grant County Sheriff's deputies provided the door-to-door notices.
The potato processing plant was completely destroyed.
"Due to the damage, we are going to call it a 100% loss," Foreman said.
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