An early morning fire broke out from stored plastics, rubber and wood at a South Carolina manufacturing plant.
Storage pallets at Carolina Poly Inc. caught fire at about 5 a.m. on Aug. 24 and later grew to include plastics, oil and several shipping trucks and trailers, said Grant Suskin, a spokesperson for the Chester County Sheriff's Office, in a video news conference.
The cause of the fire has not been determined.
Carolina Poly, which makes products including trash bags, sheeting, silage bags and shrink films, is a subsidiary of Poly-America Inc., whose headquarters in Grand Prairie, Texas, also suffered a massive fire last week in an area for outdoor storage.
In the Carolina Poly fire, five firefighters were hospitalized — four for heat-related injuries and one with a foot injury, Suskin said.
The fire was situated between a nearby forest and Carolina Poly buildings, which are safe but were evacuated as the fire grew.
About a dozen area fire crews are expecting to continue to battle the flames through the night, a post from the Chester County Sheriff's Office advised.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control advised residents to stay indoors and away from the smoke.
Poly-America ranked No. 29 in a recent Plastics News survey of North American film and sheet manufacturers, with estimated sales of $270 million.
Poly-America, which was founded in 1976, manufactures sheeting, trash bags and a variety of films. Poly-America also operates extrusion plants in Grand Prairie and Cottage Grove, Minn., and has a material reprocessing center in Mont Belvieu, Texas.