The shipping-container fire at Port Metro Vancouver does not appear to have deposited any toxic runoff in Burrard Inlet as a result of the almost 30-hour blaze that started Wednesday afternoon and ended about 7 p.m. Thursday night.

Vancouver Fire Department assistant chief Dan Wood, with the hazardous-materials unit, told the Georgia Straight Friday afternoon by phone that when the fire burned out and the cooled six-metre-long container was finally opened Thursday evening, the contents—a powdered chemical called trichloroisocyanuric acid, used as an industrial disinfectant—were essentially gone.

“It was completely ash,” he said. “It totally consumed itself.”

Wood said an environmental-remediation company, contracted by the port, would be handling the final disposition of the chemical residue. He added that an environmental-consultation firm, under some direction by the B.C. Environment Ministry, was examining the area and handling any testing for toxins that may have been released by the blaze.

The cause of the fire is still unknown, Wood said. “They’re investigating it now.” He added that “there are a number of theories” as to how the fire started because trichloroisocyanuric acid is a strong oxidizer and contact with a number of materials can cause a fire. Petroleum is one of them, Wood noted. “It reacts violently to petroleum…and those containers are used for a multitude of commodities.”

He said it was possible that a small amount of fuel leaked from a previous shipment, got soaked up by the wooden flooring, and initiated a chemical reaction.

Wood also said that he thought no toxic runoff from the massive amounts of water directed on the affected container and some surrounding stacked cans made it into the aquatic environment nearby.

He said that the three unmanned aerial devices pouring a “deluge” of water at the rate of 1,200 gallons per minute probably were in operation for 12 hours, all told. That would mean the fire department directed about 2.5 million gallons of water, or 11.25 million litres, onto the containers.

“That was for cooling the containers. The [burning] container itself was sealed. We had to cool the other ones until we could determine the manifest [contents] for them.…There was no water getting into the [affected] container,” he explained.

On contact with water, trichloroisocyanuric acid releases hypochlorous acid, used as a disinfectant, and cyanuric acid, sometimes used as a component of bleach and herbicides.

The provincial Ministry of Environment had representatives on the scene, according to Wood. Ministry spokesperson David Karn did not grant the Straight an interview Thursday, and ministry communications officer Suntanu Dalal refused to do so on Friday.

Wood said the fire department erected a berm full of approximately “40,000 pounds of sand” around the container once it was isolated in order to stop any runoff for when it was finally opened. “The berm is an aboveground giant containment pool,” he explained. “It kind of looked like a big black snake. It could hold two-and-a-half times the volume of the container itself.”

He said the container, which registered a temperature of about 750° F when it was pulled out of the stack at 2 a.m. Thursday, had cooled to ambient temperature, about 50° F, after they “let it burn itself out” by 7 p.m. Thursday.