Industrial fire rips through yard at Nisku recycling shop

A fire ripped through the yard of a Nisku recycling business Wednesday night causing a series of small explosions.

Leduc County firefighters were called to Recycle Systems Company Inc. at 1508 10th St. at 10:30 p.m.

Video of the scene taken by various witnesses shows a large fire and plumes of smoke coming from an industrial park.

The business recycles aerosol cans and compressed gas products.

Those products caused "quite a few explosions," said Tylor Bennett, deputy fire chief for Leduc County, south of Edmonton.

Firefighters had to watch out for projectiles as the exploding aerosol cans "travelled quite a distance," he said Thursday.

No firefighter was hurt and no one was on site at the time of the fire, he said.

"Just like any other fire, we deal with what we have to at the time, " Bennett said. "We kept it pretty well contained to the materials that were on fire in the yard, no loss of any major buildings or neighbouring properties." 

More than 40 firefighters from the Nisku and Calmar fire districts took two hours to contain the fire.

Some remained on site Thursday morning to put out hot spots.

Kyle Oetiker, who works at a building next door, showed up early Thursday to check for fire damage.

His building was undamaged, though he found a number of small aerosol cans in the yard, he said.

Officials with Alberta Environment were on scene Thursday morning using vacuum trucks to suck runoff water from nearby ditches as a precaution, Bennett said.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.