Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant Fire - Background

Background

The Imperial Foods building was 11 years old, although the basic structure dated back to the early 20th century. The building had been used for food processing applications and had been an ice cream factory. At the time of the fire, it included adjoining structures totaling 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2). The factory was constructed with bricks and metalwork and was one story high. The interior was a "maze of large rooms separated by moveable walls", and both workers and the product moved around the interior from process to process, going from front to rear. Imperial's operators usually kept the doors of the food processing plant padlocked and the windows boarded, to prevent theft, vandalism or other criminal acts. There had been no safety inspections by the state due to a lack of inspectors. The poultry inspector visited the site daily and knew of the fire violations. One worker stated that much of the chicken meat was rotten, and that the reason it was processed into chicken nuggets was to disguise the foul taste. He did not report these violations. Some workers were made nervous by the locked doors but did not voice their concerns for fear of losing their jobs.

The company had a poor safety record, though with no previous fatal accidents. It was cited in the 1980s for safety violations at its Moosic, Pennsylvania, plant. The violations included poorly marked or blocked emergency exits. The offending factory had been closed by the time of the North Carolina fire.

The Hamlet plant had had three previous fires but no action was taken to prevent recurrence or to unlock the doors. The building had had fires before Imperial took over as well, although these, too, were non-fatal. The Imperial plant at Cumming, Georgia, had had two major fires, one of which, in 1989, caused $1.2 million worth of damage. The Hamlet plant had no fire alarm system to warn workers farther back in the plant, and there were no sprinklers in the building.

An extensive fire was considered unlikely because of a lack of flammable materials throughout the complex, other than packing materials in the rear. There were open spaces between rooms in place of doors to allow for easy access by forklift trucks. The only barriers were curtains of plastic strips between some to hold in refrigerated air. This allowed for rapid spread of smoke and heat in the deadly blaze. The building's previous use as an ice cream production facility meant that the walls and floor were hard, smooth surfaces, which limited the amount of material that was available to absorb heat and smoke during the fire.

An inspection of the floorplan shows that 12 of the victims died and several more were injured when they ran into the cooler rather than to the front office.