—Future of Arkansas town uncertain.

Uncontrollable flames roared through a Cargill Meat Solutions plant on Easter Sunday as firefighters and other emergency response personnel could do little to control the fire which devastated the large beef plant.
The plant, situated in Booneville, AR, a town of approximately 4,000 people, was an important packaging and distribution facility for Cargill, which will now have to decide whether it is feasible to rebuild the plant.

Built in 1980, the plant employs 800 workers and is capable of producing some 500,000 pounds of product per day. Boxed beef and trim product enter the plant and are transformed into finished beef patties, portion-controlled steaks and roast beef. Customers reportedly include Arby’s, Chili’s and Applebee’s, though this information was not confirmed through Cargill.

The presence of ammonia for refrigeration hampered fire control efforts and prevented crews from getting near the blaze, allowing the flames to burn unchecked. Some 200 residents were removed from their homes on Sunday, followed by a second evacuation of a half-mile radius downwind of the plant on Monday.
 

The cause of the fire is still unknown, but welders working inside the plant were the first to notice the fire, which began to grow quickly. The plant does not operate on Sundays and only rarely on Saturdays. The 22-member maintenance crew, along with a handful of Cargill employees, were the only people inside the plant when the fire started, as contractors were taking advantage of the non-production day in order to make repairs. There were no reported injuries from the fire or ammonia exposure.

Local business and community interests have already begun planning an incentive package to keep the plant in Booneville, including an offering of 35 acres of land at a nearby location in an effort to retain the business.
“We don’t have any grasp yet on whether the plant will be rebuilt or not, because we just don’t have any information yet,” said Mark Klein, spokesman for Cargill Meat Solutions. “It’s really premature to say what decisions will be made because we’ve got an awful lot on our minds right now.”

Klein said Cargill had helped to set employees up with information about unemployment benefits and that approximately 400 applications had already been filled out.

“We’re working on a package for our employees to help them through this time and, certainly, relocation is one of the options available to some,” he said. “We’re not prepared to reveal exactly what we’ll be able to offer the employees, but they would certainly be allowed to apply for jobs at other Cargill locations.”

Due to the nature of the fire, Klein said it would be some time before crews are allowed back to the site to conduct a complete investigation and Cargill would have to factor the cause of the fire into any decisions about the future of the plant.

“It would be impossible for us to make plans for the future of the plant until some determination is made regarding the cause [of the fire],” said Klein. “The official investigation hasn’t been completed, and is just now getting started. We can’t determine how we would proceed without some of that information.”

In any event, Klein said he is sure the plant will not be operating for some time, making it especially important for Cargill to think of its employees and customers.

“It’s not going to be a situation where crews can go poke around in there for a few hours and then determine what happened,” he notes. “It will be a lengthy process, which makes it all the more important for us to help out our employees and to make sure our customers remain satisfied—they’re one of our top priorities. What we really want to do is keep the disruptions to a minimum.”

Residents of Booneville are greatly concerned about the potential for a lasting negative impact if the plant doesn’t reopen, with business leaders forecasting that an untimely demise of the facility could cause a similar situation in the community itself.

As of press time, Klein said the company was making plans to meet with a number of elected officials and economic development groups, followed by a meeting to present an aid package to employees. Wrapping up the hectic week will be meetings among representatives from other Cargill facilities to determine the best way to proceed in lieu of the lost production capacity.

“We have several other facilities around the country that do similar things such as ground beef patties and portion-control steaks,” explained Klein. “We also have some thirty facilities around the country that do processing and distribution, so although it is a major blow, we will move forward to try and come up with the best solution for our current situation. One of our primary goals is to retain our customer base.”

The Booneville plant had recently undergone what one observer, Logan County Judge Edgar Holt, believed to be a $40 million dollar expansion. Klein explained that his company did not have an official dollar figure for the expansion, although the number offered up by Holt was in the ballpark.

“The expansion was related to an increase in freezer storage space for the finished, or out-side product,” said Klein. “It didn’t have to do with production capacity or anything else.”

Although the most up-to-date information from the site gave indications that the freezer section of the plant had survived mostly intact, Klein allowed that due to the loss of refrigeration, the product contained at the facility was likely a loss.

Klein also pointed out that there had been a great deal of misinformation spread by some media sources about the fire, including the recent expansion.

“Everyone seems intrigued by the expansion and has made a big deal of it,” he said. “But the fact is, we are always making capital improvements to our plants. Maintenance and upgraded facilities are all a part of the things we do on a regular basis, spending millions of dollars to make sure we are able to stay competitive.”
“Also, a number of stories have reported that there were explosions at the plant,” Klein continued. “There were no explosions; it was simply a large fire. Along with some of the estimates of the number of people who were evacuated and for what reason... There were definitely some instances where news outlets picked the story up and ran with it before they had the facts straight.”

Klein said that although Cargill and the Booneville community are hurting, he is thankful there was no loss of life.