Camden scrapyard to pause operations after 2-alarm fire. County officials want it shut down

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EMR, a multinational scrap metal recycling company with its U.S. headquarters in Camden, is pausing operations at its scrap metal shredder after a two-alarm fire at the facility in Camden’s Waterfront South neighborhood Friday morning, the company said.

Friday’s fire, which a Camden County spokesperson said prompted 911 calls about the smell of smoke as far as Gloucester Township, is the latest of more than a dozen at EMR’s facilities in Camden in the past five years, according to the state of New Jersey’s lawsuit against the company filed earlier this year.

“After numerous fires, numerous attempts to help EMR prevent future fires, here we are again,” said Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen during a press conference Friday. “This will no longer be tolerated by me, my colleagues, our elected officials here and, more importantly, our residents.”

EMR shreds junk cars, old appliances, construction materials and other scrap metal into small pieces that can be re-melted at a facility along the Delaware River. About an hour before EMR told WHYY News it would pause operations at its shredder facility, City of Camden and Camden County officials released a statement calling on the company to fully cease operations.

“We will not stand idly by while residents are exposed to fires on a regular basis and have to bear the burdens of an operation that clearly cannot function in a safe manner,” read a statement by Camden County spokesperson Dan Keashen on behalf of Camden County Commissioner Jeffrey Nash, City of Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen, State Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez, Camden City Council President Angel Fuentes and Camden City Councilman Arthur Barclay.

The officials called on the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, state Department of Environmental Protection and “every other regulatory agency” to shut down EMR’s operations.

“We will no longer allow shelter in place alerts to go out because of another mishap in this scrap metal operation,” the statement read. “Enough is enough, we’ve heard the same stories before about lithium-ion batteries and their dangers, but that story line is old and irrelevant at this point.”

A massive four-alarm fire at the scrap metal shredder in February 2025 sent a plume of dark smoke billowing over the neighborhood and caused roughly 100 people in the surrounding community to evacuate their homes and stay at nearby hotels where EMR paid for rooms.

Friday’s fire started at EMR’s shredder facility around 2:50 a.m., according to a written statement from EMR USA CEO Joe Balzano provided by a company spokesperson. The company believes that a lithium ion battery caused the fire, he said.

The fire burned in a large pile of scrap metal for several hours before the Camden Fire Department declared the blaze under control around 5 a.m, said Camden fire chief Jesse Flax. All of the city’s nine fire companies, which include about three dozen firefighters, responded to the fire, Flax said.

At 9:30 a.m., material inside the shredder building was smoldering, and the conveyor belt carrying scrap material into the shredder was operating intermittently.

EMR said there were no injuries and no damage from Friday’s fire. Balzano said in the statement that the company is choosing to pause operations at its shredder “to complete its investigation and address all relevant findings and completely cooperate and coordinate with the Mayor’s office and all relevant authorities.” He said the company will hire a third-party firm to examine the cause of Friday’s fire,  the performance of the facility’s fire suppression and detection systems, its operational protocols, and determine if “any corrective measures” are warranted.

Balzano called on state and federal officials to establish “clear, enforceable” regulations on lithium-ion batteries, “not to deflect responsibility, but because regulation is the only durable solution to this national problem.”

“This incident is a reminder of the serious and growing challenge posed by lithium-ion batteries being improperly disposed of and finding their way into recyclable materials,” his statement read.

“We are Camden neighbors,” he added in a statement later Friday. “We take this seriously.”

Camden city and county officials call on EMR to cease operations

The statement sent by Keashen on behalf of city, county and state elected officials said the city of Camden has worked with EMR in the past to improve its facility.

“But having another two-alarm fire that created smoke plumes throughout Camden County into Gloucester Township is unacceptable, having children and families exposed to the acrid smoke on their way to work and school is intolerable,” the statement read. “Today we are calling for EMR to fully cease operating until they can guarantee the health and welfare of our residents will not be impacted by their facilities.”

The New Jersey Office of the Attorney General sued EMR earlier this year, outlining a history of at least a dozen fires at the company’s Camden facilities in the past five years and accusing the company of failing to mitigate fire risk. In February, another fire broke out at EMR’s shredder facility and a month later, a barge carrying EMR’s scrap metal on the Delaware Bay caught fire, taking the U.S. Coast Guard 24 hours to extinguish.

Camden residents now free to leave their homes, city says

The city of Camden sent a notification through its My Camden NJ app at 6:40 a.m. Friday morning, after the fire had been contained, encouraging residents to “remain indoors and avoid airborne particulates/smoke which remain in the air.” The notification also advised residents to turn off HVAC systems that draw air inside.

Air monitoring conducted by Camden County Friday morning showed “extremely elevated” levels of fine particulate pollution in some parts of the Waterfront South neighborhood, Keashen said. Fine particulate pollution can cause breathing problems and even trigger heart attacks at high levels. Air monitoring was also conducted in the Fairview and Morgan Village neighborhoods, at the Community Meadows apartments, at Holtec along the Delaware River and along the border between Camden and Gloucester City under the Walt Whitman Bridge, he said.

Keashen said county air monitoring indicated that the smoke plume “hugged the coastline” of the Delaware River south of EMR’s facility to Morgan Village, then “seeped in” towards Reworld’s trash incinerator next to I-676, before finally drifting into Gloucester City.

An automated phone call went to residents signed up for emergency alerts at 9:25 a.m., saying the “shelter-in-place from the fire at EMR has been lifted.”

At 10:41 a.m., a notification sent through the My Camden NJ app said air monitoring conducted in the Waterfront South neighborhood showed that airborne particulates had dissipated and that residents were “free to leave their homes” and turn on HVAC systems.

EMR’s new fire suppression system partially malfunctioned, fire chief says

The fire put EMR’s upgraded fire suppression system, consisting of several heat detection sensors and automatic water cannons, to the test. The system was completed earlier this month under a memorandum of understanding with the City of Camden that the company signed after the massive four-alarm fire at the shredder facility last year.

The fire suppression system partially malfunctioned during the fire Friday morning, Flax said, with one water canon failing to operate immediately. The rest of the system functioned as intended, he said.

“[An EMR employee on site] said it had a little malfunction in one spot, but they were able to correct it and then once it kicked in, everything went well,” Flax said.

“All the other areas where it did kick on, there was really nothing that had to be addressed, because they had everything contained,” Flax said. “We were able to move to the area where we needed to address a lot quicker. That’s why we were able to keep it down.”

EMR contradicted this in its statement Friday morning.

“The newly installed fire suppression system worked,” Balzano wrote.

Flax said the city’s investigation into the fire is ongoing. Officials with Camden County’s hazmat team, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Bureau of Emergency Response and state fire marshal’s office were also at the scene of the fire Friday morning.

In an interview earlier this month after the company completed its upgraded fire suppression system, Balzano said the system will not stop all fires from starting, but should stop fires from reaching the scale that previous blazes have.

During a press conference Friday, Camden County Commissioner Jeff Nash pointed to the new fire suppression system as evidence that prior efforts to improve the company’s operations have failed.

“We thought that this fire suppression system would be a meaningful response to any small fires that would occur,” Nash said. “Today we got our answer. The answer: no. It doesn’t work.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to attribute EMR USA’s statements to CEO Joe Balzano rather than a spokesperson.