RG Steel told Maryland environmental officials today that the weekend fire that lit up the skies around Sparrows Point was caused by the disposal of hot metal from the mill’s blast furnace.

“We were told that conditions relating to the idling and subsequent restart of the blast furnace led to the need to dispose of unusable metal which, in turn, caused the fire,” said Jay Apperson, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).

It is normal during a restart for molten metal – which ranges up to 3,000 degrees F – to be unusable due to high silicon content or other chemical imbalances. RG Steel recently announced it was restarting the “L” blast furnace at Sparrows Point after a sudden shutdown before Christmas due to a cash-flow crisis.

Apperson said the company called the fire “an isolated event,” but MDE plans “to have an inspector go to the site as part of a review of whether the proper precautions for handling unusable metal were followed and to evaluate whether this is likely to be more than an isolated event,” Apperson said.

Meanwhile, Baltimore County Fire Battalion Chief Kyrle Pries today provided more details about the blaze, which was first disclosed by The Brew. He said about 40 firefighters and 10 pieces of apparatus responded to the fire in a waste pit near the L furnace at 8 p.m. Friday.

“It was very voluminous, very striking-looking,” he said when he arrived on the scene.

“Flames at least 100 feet high – could be higher” were lapping up from a pit of about 100-yard circumference, Preis said. “The pit, or catch basin, was piled up with mill product and dirt, 10 to 12 feet high, along the perimeter.”

Because of this barrier, the fire did not spread out of the pit, but did move close to water filtration equipment. As a precaution, firefighters set up an 85-foot ladder pipe that sprayed the equipment down to prevent damage from heat or sparks.

He said there was no damage or injuries, and the fire was contained around 9 p.m.

The blaze produced clouds of black and red smoke that drifted over Edgemere, Lodge Forest and Fort Howard, eyewitnesses told The Brew (see photos).

The steel company followed regulatory protocol and reported the fire to MDE Friday night, according to Apperson. There was no public disclosure of the fire, and RG Steel has not responded to requests for information from this website.