PORT ANGELES — Peninsula Plywood electricians worked overnight Saturday and the plant could be well on the road to recovery from a fire by midweek if all goes as planned, President Josh Renshaw said on Sunday.
The electricians reacted to the Saturday morning fire that destroyed the control room for the plant’s boilers.
A temporary fix seems to be under way, Renshaw said.
“If we can do all that and if we can get a portable boiler midweek, we will probably work a shift on Saturday, and it could be like we didn’t miss a step as far as production,” he said.
He said he had to clear the electrical rewiring that was done with several government agencies and insurance companies.
“This all happened on a weekend, so we couldn’t have the same kind of contact we could during the week,” he said.
The full insurance adjustment could take between three and seven weeks, Renshaw added.
Without the control room, the two boilers SEmD which are needed to produce plywood SEmD cannot operate.
The damage, which could cost as much as $500,000, will be covered by insurance, he said.
Lost production and missed orders, on the other hand, could cost the mill up to $200,000, Renshaw said.
Sprinklers contained the blaze mostly to the control room, although there was some damage to equipment nearby.
The boilers themselves were not damaged, Renshaw said.
A PenPly employee reported the fire at about 5:30 a.m. as he was coming in to do maintenance.
“One other thing we will be working on is changing shift configurations for better coverage,” Renshaw said.
“This happened during the one hour and a half that no one was there.
“Right now, I’m just glad it wasn’t worse than it was.”
He said he wasn’t sure yet what caused the fire.
The plant was built in 1941 and, Renshaw noted, it “sat idle for two years” before reopening earlier this year under new ownership.
“We will find out what caused it [the fire] and work on ways to prevent it, but in these situations you can’t always be sure.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.