AP reported that A fire at the former Asarco copper smelter plant in West Texas is blamed on salvage work.

The El Paso Fire Department said that nobody was hurt in the fire which took about an hour to burn itself out.

Investigators said that salvage workers were cutting steel when they accidentally lit a section of titanium pipe. Firefighters arrived to see flames atop a water cooling tower.

Asarco LLC had operated the smelter, but sought bankruptcy protection in 2005 after being overwhelmed by cleanup costs. Asarco in 2009 announced that it would not reopen the plant which had been idle for almost a decade.

(Sourced from Associated Press)