It was during a shift change at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, May 3, 1991, when employees of Central Storage Warehouse on Cottage Grove Road discussed mechanical problems with a battery-powered forklift.
The forklift operator changed the batteries in an attempt to fix the lift, but the machine still wouldn’t operate. They set aside the repairs for the moment and proceeded to load semi trailers with butter using a different forklift.
About an hour later, that same operator heard a sound “similar to a torch being lit, only much louder.” He saw blue flames coming off the floor around the cab area of the forklift he’d just attempted to repair. So began what would become known as “The Butter Fire.”
First Madison Fire Department units were dispatched at 3:32 p.m. Within 10 minutes, multiple 911 callers were reporting a huge fire with 300-foot flames and a wall blown out of the warehouse. A second alarm was declared at 3:35 p.m., but that still would not be enough to manage the fast-growing blaze fueled by butter, lard, and other food products.
By 6:00 p.m., the fire spread from Building 1 to Building 2, and a third-alarm was raised. Firefighters were ordered off the roof of Building 3 due to the potential for Building 2 collapsing into it. Building 2 did collapse around 11:00 p.m. All fire personnel were accounted for within seconds of the collapse.
Other Dane County fire departments provided mutual aid to Madison Fire on scene, assisting with defensive fire attacks overnight. They also staffed Madison fire stations and responded to other routine emergencies still occurring around the city.
Around midnight, the Central Storage fire began to threaten the facility’s anhydrous ammonia tanks, prompting a half-mile evacuation of approximately 3,000 residents. Central Storage personnel worked to remove as many hazardous materials from the site as they could.
Fire reached the mechanical refrigeration equipment corridor around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, May 4, but the fire was stopped about an hour later thanks to an aggressive fire attack and flowing sprinkler heads.
A fire this size presents a multitude of challenges for responding firefighters, but in this case, efforts were severely impaired by melted butter, cheese, and lard.
The heat of the fire turned millions of pounds of butter into flowing liquid. Holding hand lines, climbing ladders, climbing stairs, and even walking became dangerous. In some locations, the greasy solids were waist deep.
The cold water being applied to the molten dairy products turned the liquid back into a solid. Melted butter oozed from every building opening, filled the street, overflowed nearby ditches and gutters, and threatened local waterways.
With initial property damage estimated at $7.5 million, content loss at $70 million, and $1 million in cleanup costs, there’s no argument this dairy fire in the Dairy State was the largest and most difficult the Madison Fire Department has ever confronted.
City of Madison
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