Indian Point Fire Spurs Environmental Concerns Along Hudson River

May 10, 2015 8:16 pm

There are environmental concerns Sunday after a fire at the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The transformer fire resulted in a black plume of smoke pouring from the facility at around 6 p.m. Saturday, CBS2’s Ilana Gold reported.

Sirens at the plant went off. Then a message was heard on a loudspeaker: “This is not a drill.”

“The fire was started, they believed the fire had been put out; the heat from the transformer actually reignited, so the transformer went on fire a second time, and it had to be put out a second time,” Cuomo said.

When firefighters arrived, the fire had already died down from automatic sprinklers.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo rushed to the facility with great concern. He talked to CBS2 about the badly damaged transformer and possible impact.

“It has discharged foam,” he said. “It has discharged oil. Now we’re worried about that leaking into the Hudson River – and the storm drains go down into the Hudson. So that would be a problem.”

Cuomo said the state Department of Environmental Conservation is on-site and on high alert.

“They’re doing their best to seal off storm drains, but there is a lot of foam and there’s a lot of oil, so the trick is to keep as much as we can from going into the river,” the governor said.
Jerry Nappi, spokesman for Entergy Corp., which runs Indian Point, said this kind of fire has never happened before and safeguards are in place.