Firefighters continue to battle a massive fire in Tracy that left a 1 million-square-foot medical supply distribution center in ruins and sent large plumes of black smoke into the sky and debris into neighborhoods.
Tracy police said the fire was burning at the Medline Industries facility in the 5700 block of Promontory Parkway. The structure and surrounding warehouses, which include a FedEx facility and Amazon warehouse, were evacuated. Police said there were no reports of injuries.
South San Joaquin County Fire Authority Chief Randall Bradley said in a briefing that the fire was believed to have started at the roof of the Medline building. Arriving crews at around 1 p.m. on Thursday found “heavy fire” coming from the roof.
“High winds, high temperatures, low humidity's made firefighting very difficult,” he said.
Crews attempted an interior fire attack but “could not hold the fire,” he said.
Bradley said sprinklers were not operating and he was not sure why. There was also no water pressure on fire hydrants that were within the facility. The failure of the private water system "significantly impacted" the firefight, he said.
Bradley added that embers sparked multiple three fires nearby. The fire was still burning on Friday morning. Bradley said at 10 p.m. on Thursday that crews are expected to be at the site for "a couple of days" to put it out.
"This is such a unique fire," Bradley said. "There's probably three or four of these in the history of our country...this size of warehouse fire."
Bradley said there's about 900 employees who work at the facility and there were approximately 120 when the fire occurred.
Crews were able to stop one of the fires that extended to a FedEx warehouse facility. Some pallets and containers caught on fire outside the facility, Bradley said.
Mutual aid resources also stopped spot fires near Schulte Road and Larch Road, and near Tracy Municipal Airport.
The fire scattered debris across neighborhoods.
Kim DeFrancis, a local resident, described it as, "soft, light, crispy. It just breaks apart and, and it leaves, like, charcoal stains on your fingers."
Aerial footage at the height of the fire showed that the distribution center fire produced a large wall of black smoke, with big rig containers and other vehicles on fire.
What we know about Medline Industries
Medline's website says it is the largest provider of medical-surgical products.
The company just celebrated its 60th anniversary this month. It is a distributor of about 335,000 healthcare products, including approximately 190,000 under the Medline Brand and about 70,000 of those self-manufactured, according to a recent news release.
The company has 70 global distribution centers and 30 global manufacturing facilities.
"Medline can confirm a fire is occurring at our Tracy, California distribution facility," the company said in a statement. "All Medline employees and on-site personnel are accounted for. We are coordinating closely with local authorities and first responders as we assess the fire’s impact and will share more details as they become available."
The company supplies major hospitals and health systems in Northern California including: Sutter Health, Kaweah Health, Enloe Health, Stanford Medicine, Carson Tahoe Health and U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Sutter Health sent the following statement to KCRA 3:
“Like other health systems, we are closely monitoring the situation at the Medline distribution center in Tracy. At this time, we do not anticipate broad impacts. Our supply chain teams have contingency plans in place to maintain access to critical supplies.”
https://www.kcra.com/article/tracy-medline-industries-warehouse-dis...
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