Buttered

I never thought butter could be evil. But butter in Wisconsin went rogue recently. Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident. The meltdown started at 9:00 PM on January 2 when flames started shooting out the roof of the Associated Milk Producers plant in Portage, Wisconsin.

Portage is a historic town where Native Americans, French explorers and early settlers portaged their canoes between the Wisconsin River and the Fox River, a distance of two miles. Between 1849 and 1851, the townspeople attempted to hand dig a canal between the rivers but gave up, letting the Army Corps of Engineers do the job which was completed in 1876. The Portage Canal linked Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. It is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. The butter and cheese factory is adjacent to the canal.

The fire at the dairy plant started in the room where the butter was stored, and the butter soon flowed throughout the plant as it melted. The Portage fire chief reported, “When we first tried to go up the stairs to that part that collapsed, this stuff, the butter was running down like 3 inches thick on the steps so our guys were up to their knees trying to go up the steps to get to the top and they’re trying to drag the hose line, the hose line got so full of butter they couldn’t hang onto it anymore.” Ten other fire departments were called in to assist, but the river of butter just kept flowing, some of it exiting the building into the Portage Canal.

A hazmat team was called in to clean up the mess in the canal. They treated the situation the same way an oil spill would be handled, by using absorbent booms. Thanks to their actions, the canal was successfully unbuttered.

The fire was contained in the dairy plant as well, taking a heroic six hours of work by the firefighters. The city of Portage no longer smells like burnt butter, but the story of the runaway butter probably will be told for years to come.

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