Updated: Recycling lot west of Missoula open after large scrap fire

A massive fire in the Axmen Recycling lot’s piles of vehicles near the Wye on Sunday afternoon sent a large black plume into the sky. By Monday, crews had tamped it down and the recycling lot was open for business again Monday with minimal damage.

The primary responders from Missoula Rural Fire were dispatched at 12:40 p.m. on Sunday for reports of a car fire but soon discovered the scale of the blaze. They found a large pile of cars, estimated at 100 or more, stacked up to six high with flames reaching 50 feet, according to Missoula Rural Fire Chief Ron Lubke.

On Monday, Axmen Recycling owner Guy Hanson said he's very grateful to the firefighters who responded and said they did an excellent job. The wet weather helped, he said, and there was no collateral damage, except maybe to bugs and mice living in the cars. No injuries were reported, and the only damage was loss of scrap weight from about 150 cars.

"It would be ungrateful to whine about losing the weight in the vehicles. We were really, really blessed," Hanson said. "It was as good a bad thing as you can have."

Thanks to efforts to separate the cars from the rest of the lot, there was no damage to other areas of the yard or the nearby building, Hanson said.

Firefighters from eight agencies total responded to the blaze, which periodically sparked explosions and loud booms. Lubke said the fuels in the vehicles waiting to be processed along with tires likely contributed to the explosions.

“One thing that did hamper us was these vehicles had not been processed by the wrecker in the yard yet, so they all still had oil, gasoline, fundamental fluids inside of them, which greatly contributed to the amount of fire that we had when we arrived.”

Hanson said they were unsure of how the fire was sparked in the lot, which contains somewhere between 500 and 600 vehicles.

“It was started in a pile of cars that were waiting to be processed,” he said. “About half of the cars here have already been drained of all their fluids and gas and everything else, but the others hadn’t.”

In 2021, crews responded to a blaze at the recycling lot, working overnight to put out hot spots and moving hundreds of tons of steel. The previous fire was much larger, Hanson said, and took place in the center pile. After that, he said they began to organize the lot differently and create fire lanes so “if it does happen, we can stop it.” He said those fire lanes did help slow the spread this time around. His crew is all trained in fire response, and there's fire equipment in the lot, but the fire started when no one was present.

He said there’s no simple way to extinguish an entire pile of burning cars, so on Sunday they began the overnight effort. His crew stayed all night, lifting up each burnt car with heavy machinery for the fire department to hose it down to make sure no hot spots remained.

“They’re going through the whole pile, so we really won’t be done until we get every one doused,” he said. “Because you can’t be sure of anything until it’s all done.”

However, Hanson said, his crew has some cleanup work to do raking up molten metal and other pollutants from the fire. Axmen Recycling will likely not accept cars for a few days while the cleanup is ongoing.

The burnt cars are still on the scene, Hanson said — after all, if a car burns anywhere else in Missoula, it's often brought to Axmen Recycling, so there's no better place to put a burnt car.

Authorities haven’t yet been able to provide information about the source of the fire. The plume was large enough that commercial planes coming in for landing at the Missoula Montana Airport passed through it.

Missoula Rural Fire had assistance from Frenchtown Rural, East Missoula Rural, Arlee and Florence were responding, as well as Missoula Emergency Services, the Missoula City Fire Department and the airport.

The rainy weather aided firefighters in their efforts, according to Lubke.

“We did have a fire a few years ago at the same location, same kind of deal, and it was very hot that day, so it was very exhausting,” he said. “So, the cooler, damper weather has helped kind of keep our crews from getting exhausted. We're certainly working hard still, and tired, but it didn't hurt us.”

Hanson reported Monday that, while the Axmen Recycling building is insured against fire, the scrap isn't covered.

"It's impossible to quantify what you lost," he explained. "You can't really buy insurance against that in our industry."