The fire that destroyed a massive Jim Beam warehouse filled with aging bourbon in Kentucky continued to burn on Thursday as officials said the decision on whether to extinguish is still a day or two away.
Woodford County Emergency Management Director Drew Chandler says the only thing left burning is ethanol fumes. Officials believe letting the fumes burn will have less environmental impact than spraying the fire with water, which could wash the bourbon into a nearby creek that flows into the Kentucky River.
No one was injured in the blaze that erupted late Tuesday in the warehouse near the Woodford-Franklin county line.
State officials say some runoff has already entered the water. EPA officials have been on the scene since Thursday to help assess and contain the damage.
Firefighters from four counties responded to the blaze. Lightning might have been a factor, but fire investigators haven't been able to start looking for the cause, Chandler said.
Beam Suntory officials said the multi-story warehouse that burned contained "relatively young whiskey," meaning it had not reached maturity for bottling for consumers. Bourbon acquires its color and flavor while aging for years in charred new oak barrels.
"Given the age of the lost whiskey, this fire will not impact the availability of Jim Beam for consumers," the spirits company said in a statement.
The destroyed whiskey amounted to about 1% of Beam's bourbon inventory, it said.
One standard bourbon barrel usually holds about 53 gallons of bourbon that eventually turns into around 150 to 200 750 milliliter bottles, the Courier Journal reported. If all the barrels held bourbon, that would be a loss of at least 6 million bottles, the Louisville newspaper reported.
Jim Beam is the world's largest bourbon brand. The classic American whiskey brand is owned by Suntory Holdings Ltd., a Japanese beverage company.
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