Devastating Southwest Phoenix Wood Pallet Fire Underscores Urgent Need for Action

From iGPS

Devastating Southwest Phoenix Wood Pallet Fire Underscores Urgent Need for Action

ORLANDO, Fla. – April 2, 2010 – In the wake of more than 15 major wood pallet fires in the past year, including a massive wood pallet blaze on Wednesday in Southwest Phoenix, Intelligent Global Pooling Systems (iGPS Company, LLC) is stepping up its call on Congress to set national fire safety standards for shipping pallets.

Nearly 100 firefighters battled Wednesday’s two-alarm blaze at the Hernandez Pallet Company in Southwest Phoenix that destroyed buildings and threatened lives and adjacent properties. The inferno was fueled by high winds that engulfed thousands of pallets. This wood pallet fire in Phoenix is the second major wood pallet fire in Arizona this past year, following the Western Pallet fire in Glendale, where a wood pallet fire there destroyed the 25-year-old business.

“From Arizona to Georgia and from Ohio to California, deadly wood pallet fires are occurring on a regular basis all across the country. They threaten lives, destroy property and cost millions in taxpayer dollars to contain. It’s high time the wooden pallet industry is held to the same strict fire safety standards as pallets made of safer materials,” said Bob Moore, Chairman and CEO, iGPS. “It is time for Congress to act.”

It has long been known that wood pallets present a dangerously high flammability risk. Aside from the obvious fire risks, news reports about the fire at the Hernandez Pallet Company quote a Phoenix fire official as saying that the wood pallets there posed a particular danger because they absorb chemicals that seep into the wood and, when ignited, create smoke that is ‘very hazardous to breathe in.’

“The lack of uniform fire safety standards needlessly endangers the public at large and those dedicated to ensuring our safety,” added Moore. “The lack of standards also means that wood pallet fires burden already cash-strapped municipalities across the country, diverting scarce public resources to fight wood pallet fires that diminish air quality and also waste vital and increasingly scarce water resources, especially in arid regions like Arizona. We have far too much evidence about the risks wood pallets pose to our society. We can no longer ignore them. There simply needs to be a uniform safety standard for all shipping pallets to protect the public and natural resources.”

iGPS is a provider of all-plastic pallets embedded with RFID technology. Unlike iGPS pallets, wood pallets are currently exempt from the fire safety testing required of pallets made of plastic and other alternative materials.

When stored in and around warehouses, wood pallets provide potent fuel for rapidly spreading, intense fires that endanger the lives of workers, firefighters and surrounding businesses and homes. In the course of a typical day, wood pallets are damaged, crushed, splintered, and rubbed together, creating wood dust. If left close to an ignition source, this dust can trigger a severe explosion.

“Plastic pallets adhere to the strictest federal standards possible for fire safety. It simply does not make sense that wood pallets, which are highly flammable and can produce toxic smoke from the chemicals they absorb, are not held to equal standards,” Moore said.

Burning wood pallets release toxic fumes and chemicals such as carbon monoxide and aldehydes, but also cause an economic toll with local businesses suffering billions of dollars in damages, lost jobs and productivity. This can have a trickle-down effect on other businesses that rely on the goods shipped on these pallets.

iGPS also has been calling on the federal government to establish national sanitary standards for the pallet industry to curb the threat of contamination to the U.S. food supply.