Montville – Crews from at least six towns were dispatched overnight to Connecticut Scrap for the third multi-alarm fire in as many years.

Chesterfield Fire Company public information officer Steven Frischling on Saturday morning said firefighters responding to the 1:46 a.m. call at 33 Pequot Road arrived to find “flames lighting up the entire sky.”

Eight hours later, Frischling said the brunt of the blaze estimated at three-quarters of an acre was extinguished and most firefighters had packed up. There were no injuries. No structures caught fire.

He said two previous multi-alarm fires at the scrapyard lasted from 12 to 14 hours. There also has been a single-alarm scrap pile fire and some smaller fires since then.

“I just know I’m very familiar with this one,” he said of the scrapyard.

State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokesman James Fowler said agency staff members conducted air monitoring from their 4:30 a.m. arrival at “the deep fire in a junk yard pile” to about 6:30 a.m., when they considered the fire extinguished.

Fowler said they “found no unusual readings that would be cause for concern.”

Frischling and Connecticut Scrap representative David Waddington Jr. said the cause of the fire was unknown.

Waddington, a metal trader, described it as “hard to tell” what causes fires in scrapyards. But he said the issue has become more of a problem in recycling sites all over the country with the proliferation of low-quality products that contain batteries.

“If they’re not disposed of properly, they get caught in the mix, maybe,” he said. “Entangled in something it’s not supposed to be.”

He said the company follows all protocols from the scale house to inspection processes.

“Unfortunately, it hasn’t been uncommonplace, but we’re pretty much right on top of it,” he said. “Somebody was there responding at the beginning of the flames.”

According to the National Waste and Recycling Association, lithium-ion batteries have led to an increase in fires that cost operators, insurance companies and fire professionals an estimated $2.5 billion in 2022.

They based their statistics on information from Ryan Fogelman, whose fire prevention company keeps track of publicly available information on fires at waste and recycling facilities. He found there were 390 major fires in the US and Canada in 2022, up from 272 in 2016.

Waddington called the batteries “an unfortunate evil all laced in burned plants and garbage and demolition and metal.”

The company representative thanked all emergency responders for their work fighting the fire.

Frischling said firefighting operations included employees from the scrapyard who arrived with grappling cranes to separate the roughly 60-foot-high piles of scrap so water raining down from extended ladders could reach deep into the fire.

The fire was so dense at one point that all firefighters were required to wear air packs, Frischling said.

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection was at the site to monitor air quality and found there was no danger to the public, according to Frischling.

He said tankers came from multiple departments spanning Montville, Salem, Franklin, Bozrah, Norwich, Baltic, Groton, Lyme and Old Lyme helped move “a couple million gallons” of water.

An overnight fire at CT Scrap in Montville was the third multi-alarm fire at the business in less than 3 years, says Chesterfield Fire Co PIO Steve Frischling. His video shows what they found on arrival. Tankers came from at least 6 towns. @thedayct pic.twitter.com/n3ywRL2YRI

— Elizabeth Regan (@eregan_ct) April 22, 2023

e.regan@theday.com