VIDEOS/PHOTOS: A two-mile stretch of Route 5 in Batavia closed Friday afternoon due to a fire that forced people to evacuate. Firefighters battled a fire at Hodgins Engraving on West Main Street Road. Smoke could be seen pouring from the building.
The Genesee County Sheriff’s Office said there were roughly 30 people in the building at the time the fire broke out. People were reportedly evacuated to the park across the street. All county and town buildings were ordered to hold a shelter-in-place. 20 fire departments were called to the scene.
Neighbor Lorem Vincent walked to catch a glimpse of the scene. A former firefighter, he said he’d never seen a response of that size. “Everybody’s got everybody’s back,” Vincent said. “Honestly, that’s what keeps me here, and that’s why I like it here.”
Lee Winters owns Genesee Feeds just up the road and said he heard a few booms. “I had my back to the window, but I had a customer in, and he told me what’s going on across the street,” Winters recalled. “I looked behind, and you could just see the smoke billowing across the street.”
“Magnesium doesn’t mix well with water, so we had several explosions at the beginning of this call. There is none at this point,” explained Batavia Fire Chief Chris Strathearn. “The elemental hazards are being monitored by the Town of Batavia Water (Authority and) the City of Batavia Water (Authority), DEC and OEM.”
The Department of Environmental Conservation said spill response experts responded to the scene, working with Genesee County’s HAZMAT team to contend with several drums of material. The agency said the owners of the building had estimated that the building contained large quantities of solid magnesium, three 55-gallon drums of nitric acid, one 55-gallon drum of ferric chloride, and three 55-gallon drums of a ferric chloride and copper mixture.
Sewers from inside the building were plugged, so as not to contaminate the City of Batavia’s publicly owned treatment plant, and water was diverted to an on-site retention pond.
