By Shamona McClary

Salisbury Post

Some remains of Pillowtex Plant 1 caught on fire around 2 p.m. Tuesday.

The Kannapolis Fire Department responded quickly and extinguished the fire in about 10 minutes, according to Fire Chief Larry Phillips. No one was injured.

Phillips said the fire started in an insulation debris pile located outside of the plant's east side sewing building.

The plant has been undergoing demolition for months in preparation for billionaire and plant owner David Murdock's N.C. Research Campus. The campus will focus on biotechnology and nutrition.

Phillips said Phillips said demolition workers were using welding torches to cut up a portion of the building, and oil from demolition equipment mixed with the pile of debris. Sparks from the torches fell on the oily debris, starting the fire.

The pile was about 12 to 15 feet tall. Phillips said the heavy wind probably caused the fire to burn so rapidly.

When Phillips first received the call, he thought it was going to be a large fire. But it turned out to be insignificant.

"It looked a lot worse than when we responded to the call," Phillips said.

"There wasn't much to it."

Phillips said they tried to respond as soon as possible, just in case they had to set up equipment to pump water from the lake. All utilities to the plant have been shut off, and the lake is currently being drained.

Firefighters used several gallons of water from the lake to extinguish a huge fire at the plant back in July.

That fire started in the plant's waste house building at gate 2. When the plant was in operation the house had been used to store cotton waste materials that had been reprocessed.

Phillips suspected that fire started from smoldering torch sparks. Firefighters said that was one of the largest fires they had seen in Kannapolis history.

But Tuesday's fire hardly compared. "It only generated a lot of smoke," Phillips said.

The black smoke hovered over the sky for a few minutes before firefighters applied water to it.

City Manager Mike Legg said about one-third of the site has been demolished, and D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co., a group out of Greensboro who Murdock hired, is moving swiftly to the inside of the site. Tentatively, on Nov. 19, the plant's new towel distribution building will be imploded, Legg said. But it will take about eight months before the smokestacks can be imploded.

North Main Street is scheduled to reopen Nov. 1.

Contact Shamona McClary at 704-797-4247 or smcclary@salisburypost.com.