In October 2017, fire crews in Parkersburg fought for eight days to extinguish a warehouse fire at the old Ames Shovel plant.
At the time, they had no idea what chemicals were in the columns of smoke stretching to the skies — the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection eventually filed a legal order to get that information. Lawmakers were outraged. They declared they would pass a bill that would mandate warehouses disclose key information about the chemicals inside them.
Less than a decade later, fire crews suffered 100-degree-plus heat indexes for three days, battling another warehouse blaze on the very same street. DEP is still determining what was inside this one, just like the last one.
Though the company, Peoples Cartage, disclosed its inventory, it didn’t include more comprehensive details about the chemicals inside the facility causing the black smoke that rained debris on neighbors.
On July 5, Gov. Patrick Morrisey declared a state of emergency and asked locals to shelter in place.
This was the company’s third fire in a year. Another warehouse just miles away had at least two fires in 2025, resulting in the company paying a small fine and entering into a plan to fix problems at that facility. While they turned over inventory sheets in that regulatory case, they again didn’t have the detail necessary for emergency personnel to prepare.
It didn’t have to be this way.
In 2017, then-Senate President Mitch Carmichael and then-Wood County Del. John R. Kelly called for legislative action heading into the 2018 session. They proposed all warehouses keep a sheet on file with local first responders, detailing what sorts of chemicals and materials are inside them.
Currently, chemical plants like those found in Wood and Kanawha counties have to keep that type of information on file, so firefighters can know what type of fire suppression tactics to use.
A standard safety data sheet has 16 sections, detailing how a chemical reacts, how to put it out when it’s burning and what risk it poses to humans. Inventory sheets just list the name of the material.
The 2018 session came and went — and neither Carmichael nor Kelly introduced any kind of legislation. Then 2019 came and went, and neither man introduced any legislation.
Kelly told the press at the time that he didn’t want to write any legislation that would be an overreaction to the situation, and he believed the Office of the State Fire Marshal could handle it through regulation.
Multiple attempts to contact Kelly were unsuccessful.
Carmichael said he recalled it much the same way.
“I was assured that the proper legal framework is there,” he said.
Under West Virginia law, an agency can propose regulation changes. Those changes are reviewed by a committee of lawmakers, and ultimately accepted or rejected by the Legislature before they can go into effect.
In 2020, the Fire Marshal’s Office successfully changed the state’s fire code to remove a grandfather clause for storage facilities. At the time of the 2017 fire, only new warehouses and storage facilities needed to be up-to-date with the fire code, like having sprinklers and functioning alarms.
The 2020 change, in response to the Ames fire, required all warehouses to be up-to-date. But the fire code still does not require warehouse operators to keep a sheet on hand of what kinds of materials are inside.
A DEP spokesman confirmed his agency does not have any rule on file either.
In response to the weekend fire, Carmichael said, “If there was something else that could be done, it needs to be done now, if it wasn’t, then you know, shame on us.”
