Businesses concerned about health impacts as MW Horticulture fire burns for 4th day

Businesses and commuters are sick of the smoke as a mulch fire burns at MW Horticulture in south Fort Myers for the fourth day.

Fire crews have been working around the clock to contain the flare-ups.

Business owners are concerned because this smoke is pushing away customers. They are also concerned about the health of their employees. They say the smoke is a health hazard. It travels, and it affects everybody around the area.

“Four days in, and obviously you see there’s a lot less personnel out here. A lot less apparatus here so we are making progress,” said San Carlos Park Fire Protection & Rescue Service District Public Information Officer Alexis McLellan.

McLellan said firefighters have worked tirelessly to put out a mulch fire that sparked Sunday at MW Horticulture. It is the 23rd fire they’ve responded to at this location this year.

“Everybody’s facing the same problems with the smoke and in the. In the fact that we were closed Monday. So it really affected a lot of business people on the street,” said Jim Goodall, owner of Jim Goodall Equipment.

Jim Goodall owns a business on Old US-41. It was one of the roads shut down on Monday. He said the smoke in the air was so bad that he couldn’t come to work. Customers couldn’t get there either.

Goodall is not alone. Two employees who work across the street from MW Horticulture were also impacted. One said she’d lost count of how many fires there have been at the recycling facility since she started her job three years ago.

“I don’t even. I couldn’t count them. There’s been several over the year, some somewhere the fire department have had to come. But this is the worst, you know, a missed two days of work this week,” said Jessica Jolly, a sales representative at Suncoast Furniture.

“More importantly, it’s almost impossible for me to make up for lost wages for the employees. They lose out, so we have 35 employees, that means 35 families are being impacted negatively. Negatively by this,” said Suncoast Furniture President Rajiv Varshney.

Now, all they want to see is a silver lining. “MW Horticulture just needs to start processing this waste and move it offsite. They just need to do the work,” said Varshney.

“I would just like to see if we could somehow figure out not to have any more fires,” said Goodall.

San Carlos fire said it would likely take about a week to put this fire completely out.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection released the following statement about MW Horticulture:

As of the publishing of this article, MW Horticulture is operating without a state license.