Several fire crews managed to control a fire at a Cocoa tire recycling plant and are no struggling to extinguish the blaze, the latest media reports show.

About four separate county and municipal law-enforcement and firefighter agencies, including members from the Patrick Air Force Base, made efforts to control the slow-burning fire and it took them approximately three hours.

Authorities closed the roads in the vicinity of RMD Americas plant at 550 Cidco Road
for safety reasons, but after the firefighters took control of the situation the roads were re-opened. No evacuations had been ordered.

"We've pretty much knocked it down. The burning hot tires produced a lot of smoke but the wind helped keep it down. I expect we'll be out of here in a few hours," Cocoa Fire Department chief Michael Corby said.

The large number of used tires contributed at the heavy black smoke which surrounded the recycling plant. Agents of the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) are currently monitoring the air quality, but none of them was reached for a comment on the matter.

Details regarding what may have caused the fire weren’t released to the press yet.

According to Cocoa Police Department spokeswoman Barbara Matthews, the tires started to burn at about 10 a.m. The firefighters which controlled the flames said that the origin of the blaze was a 22,500-square-foot pile of tires in an open area of the recycling plant.
The tires were pilled up at a height of about 25 feet.

There were no notable injuries.

Tires, which are made of a flexible elastomer material such as rubber with reinforcing materials such as fabric and wire, burn for long periods and produce a thick and black smoke which carries toxic chemicals from the breakdown of its compounds.

The RMD Americas plant recycles tires into rubber mulch which is often used in landscaping.