PEABODY — Heavy equipment and four Peabody Fire Department engines were required to control a mulch fire off Farm Avenue yesterday.
Billowing white smoke shot high into the air over an area near Interstate 95 and routes 128 and 1, causing state police to close busy ramps, clogging traffic.
The blaze likely began via spontaneous combustion, fire Capt. Jeff Maguire said. It produced flame on the surface and smouldered deep within a pile of mulch 100 feet in diameter and 50 feet high.
"It was a high, cylindrical-shaped pile," Maguire said.
Heavy machinery on site was used atop the pile to push over the mulch, allowing access to the fire. The department's new "tower ladder," a vehicle that allows a team of firefighters to stand high above the blaze and pour water down on top of it, was put into operation for the first time.
"It worked well," Maguire said.
Crews from Fire Department engines 3, 4, 5 and 7 fought the fire by pouring a plentiful supply of water onto it. Chemicals were not used.
The fire began to spread at some point, however, to other mulch piles.
"The wind didn't help us," Maguire said.
The biggest challenge for motorists in the vicinity of Exit 45 of I-95 south yesterday afternoon was the smoke that blew across the highway and made it hard to see. Smoke also blanketed the area and blotted out the sun in the area of the Salem Country Club.
At 2:34 p.m., at the request of the Peabody Fire Department, state police from the Danvers barracks started closing ramps on I-95, Route 128 and Route 1 around the area known as the jughandle.
Traffic was flowing freely again just before 4 p.m.
The mulch yard is leased to J.D. Raymond Transport Inc. based in Bangor, Maine, with locations in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, as well as Peabody. Yard crews helped in operating the machinery that toppled the mulch piles.
The fire was basically under control within a few hours, Maguire said.
"The guys worked hard. They made quick work of it," he said.
Nevertheless, a detail stood on scene overnight as a precaution because the fire continued to smoulder inside the pile of mulch.
The same mulch yard caught fire in June 2010. Yesterday's two alarm fire was smaller.
Firefighters from Beverly, Lynn and Salem covered for the Peabody crews during the emergency.
Onlookers and a news crew gathered on the I-95 overpass on Forest Street. They saw four state police cruisers and a Massachusetts Department of Transportation pickup parked on Exit 45 directing southbound traffic away from the exit as a plume of smoke blew across the roadway. Through the trees, one could see jets of water being sprayed on the fire.
"It's a good afternoon, something to do," said Jay Martell of Danvers, an off-duty Cambridge firefighter who was out shopping and noticed the smoke and brought his son, Jackson, 4, and Lily, 21/2 to watch.
The mulch is created from brush and logs. Maguire noted that spontaneous combustion is not unusual as the mulch degrades.
Prior to the Father's Day 2010 fire, the company had operated the mulch yard for eight years without a fire, owner John Raymond told The Salem News back then. The Peabody operation stores more than 2,500 cubic feet of mulch at the site.
A man who answered the phone at the Peabody location last night declined further comment.
Staff writer Alan Burke contributed to this report.
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