There was an explosion late Friday at an automotive supplier plant about 30 miles northeast of Grand Rapids, Dicastal North America in Greenville, safety officials confirmed on Saturday.
At this plant, they fabricate large blocks of solid aluminum or magnesium and melt it down in blast furnaces and then they use that liquid metal for automotive parts manufacturing. There is tremendous heat involved in the process, which can cause a fire.
The challenges fire departments have with this type of fire is that they cannot use water on liquid metal aluminum. Magnesium reacts violently with water, and you just can’t put water on the fire to cool it down. Instead dry chemicals are used to lower the temperature or firefighters will attempt to remove the oxygen from the fire.
