Hanover Foods factory flame causes countless 911 calls, headaches for first responders

Routine operations at a local factory are leading to countless unnecessary calls to 911, local officials say.

Passersby to the Hanover Foods plant on Wilson Avenue have been regularly calling the fire department to report a building fire in the area of Wilson Avenue and York Street, with firefighters arriving time and time again to find the same culprit: the flame of a methane flaring operation at the plant's wastewater facility.

"The positive side is, it's not a house on fire," said Hanover Area Fire & Rescue chief Tony Clousher. "The negative is, it puts resources on the street, and anytime we put resources on the street, there's a danger factor involved."

Clousher noted that emergency responses are, in themselves, dangerous, with the unpredictable nature of dealing with other drivers on the road.

"There's an inherent hazard to every response," said Clousher.

Despite the fact that firefighters are very familiar with responding to supposed "building fires" in that area for the methane flame, they still must respond as if there's an actual fire. Clousher notes that there are several farmhouses near the intersection, as well as other commercial structures, that could catch fire.

"In the back of your mind, you kind of know what it is," said Clousher, "but you don't want to downplay it until you can verify."

Often, Clousher says, a nearby officer from Penn Township Police may cancel the responding units before they arrive, or the first fire unit arrives and cancels the rest of the response.

The area is a historic one for Hanover Area Fire & Rescue: in 1989, one of the largest fires in Hanover area history struck the Snyder's factory at Wilson and York Street, destroying the multi-million dollar building. The fire was so large, it was first spotted over the horizon by a bystander across town near the North Hanover Mall, according to news reports from the time.

Most recently, as of the writing of this article, when firefighters were called to the facility, a dispatcher told responding firefighters that a passerby saw "the entire second floor of a building on fire."

That's not uncommon for the location, Clousher notes, as the building reflects the flame's glow at night, giving the illusion that there could be heavy fire throughout a building.

"As you're driving down and you see the flame over the hill," said Clousher, "you can see reflections off the glass, so it does appear like there's fire coming out of the windows on the building."

A key difference between the methane flame and a building fire, Clousher notes, is the lack of heavy smoke. The methane flame, being burned off cleanly in complete combustion, does not regularly produce visible smoke.

Should the building actually catch fire, the various building materials burning would produce incomplete combustion and significant smoke.

While the chief is unsure of how Hanover Foods could mitigate the calls — perhaps a shroud of some kind he notes — Clousher hopes that with more publicity around what the methane flame looks like it may cut down on the number of calls.

Methane flaring

According to records from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the wastewater facility at Hanover Foods treats wastewater used by the main Hanover Foods factory before it is discharged back into Oil Creek, a tributary of the Codorus Creek that feeds into the Susquehanna River in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

The process of treating wastewater creates biogas, in this case methane, as a byproduct. Documents show that the facility primarily uses that methane as fuel to power a heat exchanger in the plant, but that any excess gas produced is cleanly burned off.

Hanover Foods could not be immediately reached for comment.

Harrison Jones is the Hanover reporter for the Evening Sun. Reach him at hjones@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Hanover Evening Sun: Food factory flame causes countless 911 calls