Published: February 05, 2009 11:40 am      

New – Small fire this morning in trailer at Portage area work site

A box trailer used as a small office and lunchroom at a bony pile site was gutted in a fire Thursday morning.

Mike Krug, deputy chief of the Portage Volunteer Fire Company, said the Ridge Energy trailer was at a site off Dulancy Avenue. The waste coal is being trucked to a cogeneration plant to be burned.

Krug said workers had a space heater going in the empty office, which caught some clothes on fire. The building was gutted, though Krug said the workers might keep the structure in use. He didn’t have an estimate of the damages.

“It was fully involved inside’’ when firefighters arrived, Krug said. The blaze was knocked down within 5 minutes as firefighters worked in 1-degree temperatures.

Nobody was injured.

Companies from Lilly and Cassandra also responded.

Workers also used the building to keep 5-gallon buckets of grease warm so the grease could be smeared on equipment.