Major Fire at Nashville Thermal Transfer Plant

WTVF (CBS) & WKRN (ABC) just broke into regular TV programming to report a major fire at the Thermal Transfer Plant in downtown Nashville. The plant burns garbage to heat and cool downtown Nashville businesses. The plant is between the Cumberland River and 1st Avenue near Riverfront Park.

The only website I could find that speaks to this is WTVF's SkyCam high atop the Batman building. It is pointed towards the fire. Views from SkyCam show the building(s) fully engaged. One of the stations reported about 30 fire trucks had responded to the fire.

The local Fox affiliate does a 9 pm local newscast, and they seem to be oblivious to the event.

Friday morning, now, and the fire is pretty much manageable and under control. However, we still have all those downtown office buildings that will have NO hot water AND NO air conditioning for the next few days. This includes the STATE CAPITOL building, Gaylord Entertainment Center (the downtown arena), several other state office buildings and the Renaissance Nashville Hotel. A couple dozen other buildings also will have no air conditioning until this is fixed, and they include numerous high-rise banks housing high-dollar royers' offices. The "Thermal Plant" has supplied these buildings with hot water and cold water for air conditioning for the last quarter-century (those that have been here that long) and NONE of these buildings have ANY BACKUP systems. Zero-zip-nada-nil. Here's where it gets interesting.

There is SCHEDULED to be another vote on the Ink-'em Tax on Wednesday at the Capitol. If the air isn't fixed by then, the House Chamber air will be stale, smoky (you can smoke in the House Chambers!) and VERY hot. If you thought House members were sweating the vote LAST Wednesday, wait until THIS Wednesday with the temp around 100 degrees and all the legisleeches in a poisonous mood.

My guess - if they don't have it fixed by then, there won't be a vote. Perhaps it's a sign. AN OMEN.

I've always been a little curious as to how the Building Codes would allow all these buildings to be constructed with only the Thermal Energy plant as their source of hot and "chiller" water - with no backups whatsoever. Seems as though they should be required to have a back-em-up system in place to at least keep SOME areas operable. Because with no air, these all-glass towers are insufferable in the warm months.

The arena (where the NHL Predators play) also has a 24/7/365 ice rink in the floor, which I assume is run off its own refrigeration system. However, with no a/c, the ambient temp in the building MIGHT be enough to melt the ice. Darn good thing the Preds didn't make the NHL playoffs this year! Or there'd be a riot.

As for the prognosis - the plant - what's left of it - does have a boiler system that can be run without any trash to fuel it. They're now talking about getting the boiler back on-line and restoring function to the hot/chiller pipes. We'll see. The Trash-to-energy plant had been scheduled to stop burning trash this September as part of a 2-year transition to an all-natural-gas-fired facility that would heat and cool these buildings without benefit of waste material being trucked in to stoke the fire. That schedule has, obviously, been moved up - overnight. Michael

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