Azure Standard warehouse near Dufur burns to the ground; no one injured
By Tom Peterson
Vegetable and nut oils brought fierce flames at the Azure Standard warehouse and main office in Dufur on Monday, April 18th when the building caught on fire for reasons that are yet unknown.
“Lights flickered; They heard a pop and went up there to check it out and there was a fire,” according to a report made to Wasco County 911 records listed in the Wasco County Sheriff’s log.
Azure is an independent distributor of natural, organic an non-GMO foods as well as home health, outdoor, and garden-related products, according to company information. And it employs around 150 people, including many from The Dalles and Dufur area.
Jon Jr. Keyser gets pinned with 5 Bugles by his Dad, Jon Keyser at the annual dinner at the Dufur Volunteer Fire and Ambulance Hall on June 26, 2021. Retiring Chief Jack Frakes looks on at center.
Fire Chief Jon Keyser Jr. with Dufur Volunteer Fire and Ambulance said he got the call for the commercial fire at 79705 Dufur Valley Road at 11:13 p.m. Monday, April 18.
When he arrived, he said the stucco building with a metal roof had already ventilated, meaning a hole was in the roof and flames could be seen coming out of the top.
Several neighbors were on site as well as Azure Standard CEO David Steltzer.
Keyser was commanding an engine and a tender and had a total of four people to fight the blaze upon arrival.
Other fire agencies were called but would not be on scene for about 45 minutes.
Keyser said he had called his Dad, Jon Keyser who also showed up on scene shortly thereafter to provide point on safety.
Steltzer was removing paperwork from the building when Keyser said he arrived at the fire.
He said they stopped people from entering the building, which was loaded with fuels including vegetable and nut oils made from canola, coconut and olives.
No one was injured during the fire.
Keyser said the power to the building was still on at the transformer which is a “no-go” far as entering the building is concerned.
“The stucco kept the heat on the inside of the building,” Keyser Jr. said, noting when he got close to it, it was so hot that it made his turnouts offgas.”
With Engine 32 and Tender 31, they ran hoses and began wetting the fire down, but used their water conservatively as they only had 3,500 gallons on board.
Their equipment can spray up to 500 gallons per minute but reinforcements were more than half an hour away.
Keyser also pointed out that water is not effective in an oil fire, noting it merely pushes the fire around. Oil, rather, needs to be suffocated by removing oxygen with foam products, which they did not have.
Keyser said they later located a water supply from the nearby lake and were eventually able to draw water - sending it to their engine and then pumping it to a Wamic tender with a deck gun that could pump thousands of gallons into the center of the building.
Eventually, fire apparatus from Mid-Columbia Fire, Wamic, Tygh Valley, Antelope, Juniper Flat, Mosier, even Shankio turned out to assist with the blaze.
Keyser said he was on scene for five hours as additional fire agencies arrived and assisted, some of which were staged at the Dufur Grange Hall as they organized the site of the fire.
However, the building could not be saved.
“We had to battle it from the exterior. By the time the power company got there, it caved in on itself,” he said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Representatives from the State Fire Marshall’s Office arrived on Tuesday morning.
However, Keyser said they could not start sifting through the rubble as the fire was still hot as of this morning, April 20.
CCCNews has reached out to Azure for comment.
Azure CEO Steltzer said the loss of the facility and impact on the company-wide operations is being assessed and expected to be limited and temporary in a press release.
“We appreciate our Azure community and the many expressions of support we are receiving,” he wrote. Click here to see the whole release.
