A pickle factory in New Jersey was destroyed in a fire Saturday morning that also threatened two nearby schools, WNBC reported.
“Thankfully, our firefighters were able to stop the blaze from spreading to PANTHER Academy,” Paterson’s Mayor André Sayegh said in an Instagram post.
No one was working inside the factory at time the fire broke out, WLNY reports. One firefighter was injured, but “will be ok,” the outlet also reported.
Fire fighters and police responded to a call around 6 a.m. to the 220 Ellison Street location, Paterson’s head of public safety, Jerry Speziale said, according to WNBC.
The fire, which took hours to extinguish, caused the building’s roof to collapse, according to WLNY.
The three-alarm blaze took out much of the Ellison Street factory. Thanks to firefighters’ efforts, neither the high school nor a nearby community college were damaged, WNBC reported.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known, the outlet also reported.
Dun and Bradstreet list the employee count of Pickle King as 8, with an annual revenue estimate of $1,716,681. According to their data, the company was founded in 1982. The company reportedly provides pickles, preserves, jellies, and jams.
“I am very proud of the work of Paterson’s bravest,” Mayor Sayegh said in his post.
The fire at Pickle King comes the day after an explosion at a chocolate factory in West Reading, Pennsylvania — about 125 miles west of Paterson, New Jersey — left at least two dead and five missing, as TheBlaze reported.
Lists of “suspicious” fires at food plants claiming our “food supply is under attack” began circulating on social media in 2022. City Journal reports that the posts fail to provide crucial context.
“In many cases, fires were related to construction, welding mishaps, a malfunctioning heater, and other quotidian problems. In other words, these were typical industrial accidents. Among the incidents commonly circulated on lists of suspicious fires, I couldn’t find any in which authorities said they believed the cause was arson,” James B. Meigs says in his reporting for CJ.
The seeming rash of food processing facility fires “does not signal anything out of the ordinary,” according to the National Fire Protection Association as quoted by FactCheck.org.
TheBlaze reached out to the Paterson Fire Division and to Mayor Sayegh for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.
Watch WNBC’s coverage of the fire at Patterson, NJ’s Pickle King building below.
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