MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark.-- The Butterball plant and feed mill caught fire just before midnight Sunday, shutting down production for now.
From the outside of the plant, it looks like business as usual, but on the inside at Butterball it's anything but.
"At a bare minimum we will not be producing feed until Wednesday," said Butterball complex manager John Smalley.
Evidence that one little piece of equipment can bring this whole place to a grinding halt.
"Feed has to reach a temperature of about 185-degrees for it to be pelletized," he said.
And ironically, the cooler to cool feed down post-pellet is what caught fire.
"The feed just got too hot in there," Smalley said.
The fire started in the cooler that sits in the basement of the three story building. It cools down the some 10,000 pounds of feed that pours into it. But early Monday morning, that feed got so hot that it ignited. And with the dust from the feed going up into some very tall pipes, it was the perfect combo for fire, because the dust from it carried the flames up esentially four stories.
