Clean Green Recycling Center fire nearly declared a local emergency
Hollister, Calif - The Clean Green recycling center fire in Hollister may be contained, but the fire was nearly declared a local emergency.
The fire was put out on Friday night after a long week of battling what remained.
Yet, it posed a big enough risk to be almost be declared a local emergency in front of the county.
It happened last Monday with flames burning through the night, smoldering in mulch by Tuesday.
"The back part, which is really unusual, was what was se on fire. Usually those don’t obviously catch fire because their log. The green waste usually smolder, but never the logs," owner Pete Forneris said.
The San Benito County Office of Emergency Services readied an agenda item citing the center fire as a "local emergency." One factor to that is the cost of response.
“In this situation, we are having conversations with the state to see if there’s available funds in there. And we’re also working with the property owner to see if maybe there’s some reimbursement that can be negotiated on his front," San Benito County public information officer Rosemerry Dere said.
San Benito’s code enforcement states they’ve worked with the owner through the process to make the site more manageable.
“So far, he hasn’t met those. We’ll compete some of the process, but not really get it all they way through," Dere said. "Like completing a fire inspection is one of those things that is still outstanding.”
Forneris talked about working through violations in the past.
“They say I’ve been in violations for years and years, but if you look at Cal Recycle, because they have tonnages they report, I had no violations," Forneris said.
On the containment process, Forneris had a hand in helping to mitigate the blaze.
“He was working in conjunction with the environmental company that the county brought out in order to get the material removed out of there, so that we could get to the burning portion of the pile," Hollister Fire Johnathan Goulding said.
Materials on site that were intitally seen as hazardous were reported to environmental health.
When asked about hazardous material on site, forneris reiterated his facilty was up to snuff.
“No, no. We source separate everything. Everything has to have its own space and has to be separated. So no, there was no - it’s 100% organic wood material," Forneris said.
The county is looking into a receivership for the property which Forneris refutes due to working on clearing the site of fire to maintain the property.
KION asked what the specific hazardous material were burned at the site, but have not heard back from the county's Environmental Health department.
