A fire broke out at M&M Waste Oil Service on East Wade Hampton Boulevard in Greer on Saturday, sending crews scrambling to contain flames that spread across the lot and into storage containers. The blaze forced a partial closure of one of the Upstate's busiest commercial corridors, disrupting weekend traffic for a second time in less than a week.
Emergency responders were initially sent to the scene after reports of a commercial vehicle fire, according to Times Now, before flames spread to ground materials and storage containers on the property. A video from WOWT showed crews responding to the large fire, though early regional reports described the site as an oil refinery.
That characterization was inaccurate. The facility is M&M Waste Oil Service on East Wade Hampton Boulevard, a commercial waste oil recycling and recovery business rather than a crude oil refinery, according to the Hindustan Times. The facility handles used oil and industrial fluid recovery rather than crude refining, and it is registered with the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services as an authorized site for underground storage tank sludge disposal and waste oil recycling.
Highway Shuts Down Again on Wade Hampton Corridor
The Greer Fire Department temporarily closed a portion of East Wade Hampton Boulevard to create an emergency perimeter and accommodate incoming mutual-aid units, the same report notes. The closure struck a corridor still recovering from trouble earlier in the week: just two days prior, on October 1, West Wade Hampton Boulevard experienced major lane closures and delays following multiple fatal collisions, as Hoodline reported in coverage of that deadly crash.
East Wade Hampton Boulevard, designated as U.S. Route 29, carries substantial daily traffic between Greenville and Spartanburg. With that volume of traffic funneling through the Upstate, even a temporary emergency perimeter around the fire scene was enough to ripple into significant regional gridlock.
Training Center Ribbon-Cutting Scheduled Days Before Blaze
The $16 million Public Safety Training Center was finished, and its ribbon-cutting was scheduled for Tuesday, September 29, four days before the October 3 fire, according to Hoodline's earlier report on the new training facility. The center features a fire tower and live-scenario fire-training features. Local crews had previously needed to travel out of county for live-fire training exercises.
Regional weather monitoring by the National Weather Service recorded rain and early afternoon thunderstorm risks across the Greenville-Spartanburg area on the day of the fire, conditions that can affect smoke plumes and runoff containment during active firefighting.
The precise trigger of the initial vehicle fire has not been determined, and it is not yet known whether hazardous materials required specialized foam suppression during the response. Fox Carolina said it was working to learn more about the fire as crews continued operations at the scene.
