March 11, 2026
381: The Great Butter Fire
A food-based fire takes shape in 1991 Wisconsin.
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WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_01]: A dairy disaster.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Jason Horton.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leib.
00:03.895 --> 00:05.256
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is Ghost Town.
00:20.850 --> 00:25.114
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want you to take a look at this photo, but I sent you and to give me your impressions.
00:25.254 --> 00:26.135
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you seeing?
00:26.175 --> 00:29.498
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks like
00:30.457 --> 00:43.099
[SPEAKER_01]: like bricks of gold melting that's what it looks like it looks like bricks of gold melting and some fire yeah that's what it looks like just yeah at the photo
00:43.197 --> 00:45.159
[SPEAKER_00]: it looks pretty intense.
00:45.179 --> 00:45.960
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I would say.
00:47.302 --> 00:55.891
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what this photo is is documentation of Madison Wisconsin's great butter and fire flood.
00:56.272 --> 00:58.114
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not joking, that's what it is.
00:58.154 --> 01:03.440
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a huge flood, torrential flood, and giant butter and dairy-related fire.
01:03.720 --> 01:11.449
[SPEAKER_00]: So in Madison, Wisconsin, in the early 90s,
01:11.429 --> 01:22.649
[SPEAKER_00]: The result was a nauseating event of pooling dairy, melted cheese, burned cranberries, and a torrential flood of molten dairy products that tormented and traumatized the city for years to come.
01:23.411 --> 01:24.773
[SPEAKER_00]: A meltdown, literally.
01:25.695 --> 01:32.307
[SPEAKER_00]: Only in Wisconsin, today we're talking about the great butterfly and flood of 1991.
01:32.287 --> 01:36.537
[SPEAKER_00]: So, very, very, very short economics lesson to begin, get a little context.
01:36.898 --> 01:45.257
[SPEAKER_00]: In the late 70s and early 80s and into the 90s, the US government purchased excess quantities of cheese and butter in efforts to keep dairy prices stable and high.
01:45.718 --> 01:47.983
[SPEAKER_00]: This is called price support in economics.
01:47.963 --> 01:53.668
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the government went hard on the cheese and butter buying, farmers responded by increasing their production of milk and butter fat by 30%.
01:53.768 --> 01:57.412
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though, really consumer demand was not there.
01:57.912 --> 02:00.114
[SPEAKER_00]: The government was just, of course, buying a lot of dairy.
02:00.995 --> 02:12.625
[SPEAKER_00]: I was constantly state journal article titled The Butter Cup runeth over, from April 1990, reported that £330 million of dairy products were just sitting in warehouses because of price support.
02:13.126 --> 02:14.927
[SPEAKER_00]: Tons of dairy just sitting there.
02:15.528 --> 02:17.970
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep that mind.
02:17.950 --> 02:19.933
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, sounds messy.
02:20.113 --> 02:20.654
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds messy.
02:21.115 --> 02:22.477
[SPEAKER_00]: Messy, maybe a little smelly.
02:22.497 --> 02:22.818
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
02:23.839 --> 02:36.820
[SPEAKER_00]: So on the afternoon of May 3rd, 1991, a fire broke out at Central Storage and Warehouse in Cottage Grove Road, a 500,000 square foot complex that stored at 10 to 15 million pounds of government surplus butter.
02:37.390 --> 02:48.306
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of the fire, the building also stored or at the time of the fire, building also stored ocean spray cranberries and according to one employee, quote, millions and millions of hot dogs.
02:49.268 --> 02:50.530
[SPEAKER_00]: He was, did not see that.
02:50.630 --> 02:51.190
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't see it.
02:51.371 --> 02:51.831
[SPEAKER_00]: You're floored.
02:51.851 --> 02:52.232
[SPEAKER_00]: You're floored.
02:52.252 --> 02:52.412
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
02:52.553 --> 02:55.457
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I went to college, by the way, just a little more contrary to my injury.
02:55.477 --> 02:56.739
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know.
02:56.879 --> 02:57.099
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
02:57.119 --> 02:59.142
[SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to, it's not, this is growth.
02:59.343 --> 02:59.723
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
02:59.743 --> 02:59.843
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
02:59.863 --> 03:00.024
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
03:00.044 --> 03:00.985
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
03:00.965 --> 03:06.212
[SPEAKER_00]: So that guy was right, Oscar Meyer actually stored 4 million pounds of sausages in the facility as well.
03:06.792 --> 03:16.725
[SPEAKER_00]: The fire began when a forklift battery in the building malfunctioned, building owner Ken Williams stated that the fire grew so quickly that quote, the sprinkler systems were not able to even work.
03:16.745 --> 03:23.614
[SPEAKER_00]: As the fire department arrived and began attempting to put out the fire, a thick fatty pool of dairy in and around the facility crew.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just to, you know, nobody's dies in this, everyone is okay.
03:29.791 --> 03:35.037
[SPEAKER_00]: Fire trucks could not effectively enter and leave the area, nor could fuel trucks to refill the fire truck's gas tanks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Said acting Madison Fire Department chief Stephen Davis quote, it literally was a river of butter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mechanics traveled through the butter river on foot with five US gallon buckets of diesel fuel to the fire trucks, who were still spraying water at the building.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This caused more gooey melted cheese and butter to flow out, so that's what's happening inside of the building.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Outside nearly 3,000 nearby Madison residents were evacuated because firefighters thought the flames might spread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After about two and a half hours, the fire did spread to a second factory building.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Five hours later, that building collapsed, creating a massive wave of melted butter.
04:18.640 --> 04:23.591
[SPEAKER_00]: City engineering crews constructed levees to contain the molten dairy and lard, but it was not easy.
04:23.631 --> 04:31.387
[SPEAKER_00]: Firefighters had to wait through the viscous, slippery pools of butter and cheese that were now in some parts of the factory about five feet deep.
04:31.888 --> 04:35.957
[SPEAKER_00]: The melted dairy also made it difficult to use typical equipment.
04:35.937 --> 04:43.006
[SPEAKER_00]: So, many mechanics tried to park their equipment far from the flames, trudging upstream through a hot flow of butter to get closer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Firefighter Stephen Davis reported having, quote, butter in places a guy shouldn't have butter by the end of the night.
04:50.736 --> 04:53.279
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it was like a scene from World War II.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was insane.
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[SPEAKER_00]: People were trudging through butter, trying to put out this horrific, hot, greased fire, fat fire, food fire, kind of a thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a nightmarish food fight.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Fire department chief Stephen Davis could not believe any of this was happening.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He had been with the Madison Fire Department only since 1989, witnessing the catastrophe just a couple years into his career.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Later, he would say, the more water firefighters used, the more quote, gooey gelatinous stuff flowed out of the building.
05:22.903 --> 05:26.068
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, in all my training and experience, I never come across anything like it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Even the old timer has never seen anything like it, he said.
05:29.971 --> 05:36.903
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point while battling the blaze, Davis was sent to the roof of an adjacent building, where he and a few others focused a hose on a fire.
05:37.604 --> 05:47.541
[SPEAKER_00]: They stayed there for about eight hours and one, and when they finally came down from the roof at 5.30 a.m. the next day, he and his team attempted to move the hose line further between the two buildings.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He stepped off a loading dock into what he thought was solid ground, and instantly found himself up to his chest in melted butter.
05:55.076 --> 05:57.621
[SPEAKER_00]: For days Madison Fire crews tried to put out this fire.
05:58.022 --> 06:09.225
[SPEAKER_00]: More people were evacuated, in a panic the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources barricaded Madison's lakes and streams, of which there are many, making dams to ensure the butter flood didn't make contact with area water sources.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The DNR worked with crews from Madison City Engineering and Public Works Department to steer the butter river into a stormwater discharge area beneath a nearby highway overpass.
06:19.482 --> 06:28.971
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the DNR site, water had to be pumped out of the discharge area into another stormwater discharge area as the butter was flowing in faster than it could be sent into the sanitary sewer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of May 4, 1991, more than 3 million gallons of melted butter and fire runoff had been pumped into that stormwater discharge area.
06:38.379 --> 06:47.127
[SPEAKER_00]: But on May 5, it rained, hard, and the rising water levels threatened to send the butter flood over the last
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[SPEAKER_00]: The DNR had to quickly build more dams because of the rising water levels.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By May 6, the fire was finally under control.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another 11 million gallons had been pumped into the sanitary sewer, but now the butter was cooling and congealing in the drainage area.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The U.S. Department of Agriculture brought in salvage contractors to try and remove the solidifying disgusting food waste.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so how is this great butter flood finding you?
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[SPEAKER_00]: unique to unique unique yeah you never talked about anything no we've we've come close with the molasses flood right but that was deadly that was that was different tone yeah this again not deadly not deadly but still very disgusting and
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[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of like molasses versus like a cheese or a butter bun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is also dogs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The year I graduated high school.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was not mad at this point.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it's like this food.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This massive like disgusting waste in food.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I also think of butter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm sure it can.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it's weird to think of like butter burning because it's.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's all very oily so that that makes sense, but I also think it was being like a liquid too So interesting to think about yeah, I mean it must be so hot that you know, yeah It's hard for butter or I mean we put butter in a pan and then yeah You just got cranked up and it's pretty disgusting And very mentally lot going on
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[SPEAKER_00]: According to Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources report, the cleanup cost approximately $550,000.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The damages included bakery products, ham, and 1,000 pounds of and hydros ammonia.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A colorless, highly pungent and toxic gas commonly used as agricultural fertilizer and refrigerant.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All in all, it took about 20 hours to contain the blaze, and eight days to put up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And eight days to put the fire completely out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks in part to plenty of fuel from the insulation around all of the cold storage units and food, of course, lots of food, and beyond that, 20 million pounds of butter.
08:46.569 --> 08:48.272
[SPEAKER_00]: The fallout after this break.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The following few weeks were dedicated to cleaning up, hauling huge piles of meat and rubble to the Dane County landfill, staying ahead of rain and heat that remelted, congealed butter, and gradually pumping that butter out of the stormwater drainage area.
09:01.449 --> 09:07.240
[SPEAKER_00]: So the aftermath was bleak and disgusting and very, very smelly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, Arson investigators ruled the fire to be an accident that originated near a battery propelled forklift, but the EPA likened the event to a massive oil spill in scope and severity.
09:17.256 --> 09:28.654
[SPEAKER_00]: Two weeks after the fire, Ted Amman of the State Department of Natural Resources said efforts to clear the spoiling meat products and keep the melted butter out of nearby waterways were a quote, success.
09:28.938 --> 09:30.302
[SPEAKER_00]: And I suppose that was true.
09:30.342 --> 09:34.635
[SPEAKER_00]: The DNR monitored the nearby waterways very few fish died after the fire, a great thing.
09:35.177 --> 09:37.504
[SPEAKER_00]: Most waterways were protected, another great thing.
09:38.086 --> 09:43.302
[SPEAKER_00]: Most importantly, however, nobody died and nobody was badly injured, also a wonderful thing.
09:44.395 --> 09:46.098
[SPEAKER_00]: But the area was pretty wrecked.
09:46.499 --> 09:57.259
[SPEAKER_00]: The fire and subsequent dairy flood caused major financial losses, including 7.5 million in property damages, that's 17.7 million in 2025, and nearly 1 million in fire control costs.
09:57.279 --> 09:59.984
[SPEAKER_00]: That's 2.36 million in 2025, yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing some inflation math here.
10:02.148 --> 10:04.250
[SPEAKER_00]: The cleanup cost approximately $550,000.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's $1.3 million in 2025 and was mostly paid by the central storage and warehouse company and a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In their attempt to clean up all the butter, Madison Fire Department was forced to throw away nearly all of their firefighter gear.
10:21.790 --> 10:30.079
[SPEAKER_00]: Fire Department Chief Stephen Davis said since he was still, you know, new to the job, that he got stuck with steam cleaning the hoses that weren't
10:30.700 --> 10:39.251
[SPEAKER_00]: When people talk about this event, they talk about how insane it was, but they always hit upon the fire and floods most powerful short-term legacy, the smell.
10:39.972 --> 10:44.037
[SPEAKER_00]: Davis said the smell was rotten, a mixture of burned butter, baked ham, and cranberries.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, on a hot human day in the summer, you can still once in a while catch the vague stench almost 30 years later, even though the building's been remodeled, he said.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We used it as a resting and staging area.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The firefighters that would come back there were just covered in the stuff and it just
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[SPEAKER_00]: and informal year and survey by the Madison Capital Times, named the Butterfire the most important local news story of 1991.
11:07.769 --> 11:22.037
[SPEAKER_00]: In October 2011, more than 20 years after the flames, the Central Storage and Warehouse Company finished reconstruction on the damaged area, along with creating, adding a 42,000 square foot freezer.
11:22.017 --> 11:33.317
[SPEAKER_00]: David's memories were so vivid even decades after that he admitted that he admitted that after all that he saw, all that he experienced, he had to reassess his relationship with butter and some other foods.
11:33.838 --> 11:40.750
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, it was between that and all the hands that we saw floating in the river of butter, he said, I didn't need ham for a little while after that.
11:40.990 --> 11:46.219
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's Wisconsin, so a little while, a couple days, couple weeks, who's to say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: People on Reddit and Facebook still talk about this event and the impact it had on themselves and Madison as a whole.
11:52.787 --> 11:59.936
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's Marsha Rummel in a Facebook post, quote, I lived about three miles away from Central Storage, a time of the fire, near the Yajara River.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the following days, bits of greasy charred paper wrappers floated down into my art.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I worked right next door at the warehouse behind Colvers and Cottage Grove Road.
12:09.468 --> 12:13.793
[SPEAKER_00]: I took TV news reporter Joel Dispane up on our warehouse roof to report on the fire.
12:13.958 --> 12:18.026
[SPEAKER_00]: We were up there for about two minutes before some sort of fire marshal yelled at us to get off of there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Ten minutes later, the entire east wall collapsed, sending an avalanche of canned hams onto our lot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was young and poor at the time and ate the canned ham for quite a few months after the fire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The concrete columns that supported the overpass had melted butter stains, going up six feet high on them for decades after the fire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But most notably, as we've said, people's collective memories focus on the smell.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is Denise Karn's via Facebook.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That smell.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Ugh.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For months afterwards, during the summer, the entire area smelled like rancid milk.
12:48.492 --> 12:54.318
[SPEAKER_00]: Said air in May 16, you could feel the heat of the fire from Highway 51, and the black smoke was so thick.
12:54.819 --> 13:00.925
[SPEAKER_00]: I always thought the smell from Oscar Meyer across the highway was ronchy, but that burning dairy smell, disgusting.
13:00.905 --> 13:02.709
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside was Compton on Reddit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I will never forget that smell.
13:04.593 --> 13:05.535
[SPEAKER_00]: It was in the air for months.
13:05.976 --> 13:12.289
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to middle school about a mile from the fire and by the start of the school year, the smell of burnt, spoiled dairy was everywhere still.
13:13.532 --> 13:16.618
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the story of Madison's Great Butter Fire.
00:00.031 --> 00:01.512
[SPEAKER_01]: A dairy disaster.
00:01.893 --> 00:02.673
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Jason Horton.
00:02.854 --> 00:03.614
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leib.
00:03.895 --> 00:05.256
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is Ghost Town.
00:20.850 --> 00:25.114
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want you to take a look at this photo, but I sent you and to give me your impressions.
00:25.254 --> 00:26.135
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you seeing?
00:26.175 --> 00:29.498
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks like
00:30.457 --> 00:43.099
[SPEAKER_01]: like bricks of gold melting that's what it looks like it looks like bricks of gold melting and some fire yeah that's what it looks like just yeah at the photo
00:43.197 --> 00:45.159
[SPEAKER_00]: it looks pretty intense.
00:45.179 --> 00:45.960
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I would say.
00:47.302 --> 00:55.891
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what this photo is is documentation of Madison Wisconsin's great butter and fire flood.
00:56.272 --> 00:58.114
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not joking, that's what it is.
00:58.154 --> 01:03.440
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a huge flood, torrential flood, and giant butter and dairy-related fire.
01:03.720 --> 01:11.449
[SPEAKER_00]: So in Madison, Wisconsin, in the early 90s,
01:11.429 --> 01:22.649
[SPEAKER_00]: The result was a nauseating event of pooling dairy, melted cheese, burned cranberries, and a torrential flood of molten dairy products that tormented and traumatized the city for years to come.
01:23.411 --> 01:24.773
[SPEAKER_00]: A meltdown, literally.
01:25.695 --> 01:32.307
[SPEAKER_00]: Only in Wisconsin, today we're talking about the great butterfly and flood of 1991.
01:32.287 --> 01:36.537
[SPEAKER_00]: So, very, very, very short economics lesson to begin, get a little context.
01:36.898 --> 01:45.257
[SPEAKER_00]: In the late 70s and early 80s and into the 90s, the US government purchased excess quantities of cheese and butter in efforts to keep dairy prices stable and high.
01:45.718 --> 01:47.983
[SPEAKER_00]: This is called price support in economics.
01:47.963 --> 01:53.668
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the government went hard on the cheese and butter buying, farmers responded by increasing their production of milk and butter fat by 30%.
01:53.768 --> 01:57.412
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though, really consumer demand was not there.
01:57.912 --> 02:00.114
[SPEAKER_00]: The government was just, of course, buying a lot of dairy.
02:00.995 --> 02:12.625
[SPEAKER_00]: I was constantly state journal article titled The Butter Cup runeth over, from April 1990, reported that £330 million of dairy products were just sitting in warehouses because of price support.
02:13.126 --> 02:14.927
[SPEAKER_00]: Tons of dairy just sitting there.
02:15.528 --> 02:17.970
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep that mind.
02:17.950 --> 02:19.933
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, sounds messy.
02:20.113 --> 02:20.654
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds messy.
02:21.115 --> 02:22.477
[SPEAKER_00]: Messy, maybe a little smelly.
02:22.497 --> 02:22.818
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
02:23.839 --> 02:36.820
[SPEAKER_00]: So on the afternoon of May 3rd, 1991, a fire broke out at Central Storage and Warehouse in Cottage Grove Road, a 500,000 square foot complex that stored at 10 to 15 million pounds of government surplus butter.
02:37.390 --> 02:48.306
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of the fire, the building also stored or at the time of the fire, building also stored ocean spray cranberries and according to one employee, quote, millions and millions of hot dogs.
02:49.268 --> 02:50.530
[SPEAKER_00]: He was, did not see that.
02:50.630 --> 02:51.190
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't see it.
02:51.371 --> 02:51.831
[SPEAKER_00]: You're floored.
02:51.851 --> 02:52.232
[SPEAKER_00]: You're floored.
02:52.252 --> 02:52.412
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
02:52.553 --> 02:55.457
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I went to college, by the way, just a little more contrary to my injury.
02:55.477 --> 02:56.739
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know.
02:56.879 --> 02:57.099
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
02:57.119 --> 02:59.142
[SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to, it's not, this is growth.
02:59.343 --> 02:59.723
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
02:59.743 --> 02:59.843
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
02:59.863 --> 03:00.024
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
03:00.044 --> 03:00.985
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
03:00.965 --> 03:06.212
[SPEAKER_00]: So that guy was right, Oscar Meyer actually stored 4 million pounds of sausages in the facility as well.
03:06.792 --> 03:16.725
[SPEAKER_00]: The fire began when a forklift battery in the building malfunctioned, building owner Ken Williams stated that the fire grew so quickly that quote, the sprinkler systems were not able to even work.
03:16.745 --> 03:23.614
[SPEAKER_00]: As the fire department arrived and began attempting to put out the fire, a thick fatty pool of dairy in and around the facility crew.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just to, you know, nobody's dies in this, everyone is okay.
03:29.791 --> 03:35.037
[SPEAKER_00]: Fire trucks could not effectively enter and leave the area, nor could fuel trucks to refill the fire truck's gas tanks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Said acting Madison Fire Department chief Stephen Davis quote, it literally was a river of butter.
03:41.705 --> 03:49.534
[SPEAKER_00]: Mechanics traveled through the butter river on foot with five US gallon buckets of diesel fuel to the fire trucks, who were still spraying water at the building.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This caused more gooey melted cheese and butter to flow out, so that's what's happening inside of the building.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Outside nearly 3,000 nearby Madison residents were evacuated because firefighters thought the flames might spread.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After about two and a half hours, the fire did spread to a second factory building.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Five hours later, that building collapsed, creating a massive wave of melted butter.
04:18.640 --> 04:23.591
[SPEAKER_00]: City engineering crews constructed levees to contain the molten dairy and lard, but it was not easy.
04:23.631 --> 04:31.387
[SPEAKER_00]: Firefighters had to wait through the viscous, slippery pools of butter and cheese that were now in some parts of the factory about five feet deep.
04:31.888 --> 04:35.957
[SPEAKER_00]: The melted dairy also made it difficult to use typical equipment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, many mechanics tried to park their equipment far from the flames, trudging upstream through a hot flow of butter to get closer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Firefighter Stephen Davis reported having, quote, butter in places a guy shouldn't have butter by the end of the night.
04:50.736 --> 04:53.279
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it was like a scene from World War II.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was insane.
04:54.781 --> 05:02.371
[SPEAKER_00]: People were trudging through butter, trying to put out this horrific, hot, greased fire, fat fire, food fire, kind of a thing.
05:02.471 --> 05:05.775
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a nightmarish food fight.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Fire department chief Stephen Davis could not believe any of this was happening.
05:09.942 --> 05:15.611
[SPEAKER_00]: He had been with the Madison Fire Department only since 1989, witnessing the catastrophe just a couple years into his career.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Later, he would say, the more water firefighters used, the more quote, gooey gelatinous stuff flowed out of the building.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, in all my training and experience, I never come across anything like it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Even the old timer has never seen anything like it, he said.
05:29.971 --> 05:36.903
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point while battling the blaze, Davis was sent to the roof of an adjacent building, where he and a few others focused a hose on a fire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They stayed there for about eight hours and one, and when they finally came down from the roof at 5.30 a.m. the next day, he and his team attempted to move the hose line further between the two buildings.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He stepped off a loading dock into what he thought was solid ground, and instantly found himself up to his chest in melted butter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For days Madison Fire crews tried to put out this fire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: More people were evacuated, in a panic the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources barricaded Madison's lakes and streams, of which there are many, making dams to ensure the butter flood didn't make contact with area water sources.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The DNR worked with crews from Madison City Engineering and Public Works Department to steer the butter river into a stormwater discharge area beneath a nearby highway overpass.
06:19.482 --> 06:28.971
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the DNR site, water had to be pumped out of the discharge area into another stormwater discharge area as the butter was flowing in faster than it could be sent into the sanitary sewer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of May 4, 1991, more than 3 million gallons of melted butter and fire runoff had been pumped into that stormwater discharge area.
06:38.379 --> 06:47.127
[SPEAKER_00]: But on May 5, it rained, hard, and the rising water levels threatened to send the butter flood over the last
06:47.107 --> 06:50.492
[SPEAKER_00]: The DNR had to quickly build more dams because of the rising water levels.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By May 6, the fire was finally under control.
06:54.257 --> 07:00.545
[SPEAKER_00]: Another 11 million gallons had been pumped into the sanitary sewer, but now the butter was cooling and congealing in the drainage area.
07:01.286 --> 07:07.475
[SPEAKER_00]: The U.S. Department of Agriculture brought in salvage contractors to try and remove the solidifying disgusting food waste.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so how is this great butter flood finding you?
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[SPEAKER_00]: unique to unique unique yeah you never talked about anything no we've we've come close with the molasses flood right but that was deadly that was that was different tone yeah this again not deadly not deadly but still very disgusting and
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[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of like molasses versus like a cheese or a butter bun.
07:31.918 --> 07:32.899
[SPEAKER_00]: This is also dogs.
07:32.919 --> 07:34.381
[SPEAKER_01]: The year I graduated high school.
07:35.082 --> 07:35.222
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
07:35.762 --> 07:36.003
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
07:36.103 --> 07:36.403
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was not mad at this point.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it's like this food.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This massive like disgusting waste in food.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I also think of butter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm sure it can.
07:47.376 --> 07:50.340
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's weird to think of like butter burning because it's.
07:50.320 --> 08:09.325
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's all very oily so that that makes sense, but I also think it was being like a liquid too So interesting to think about yeah, I mean it must be so hot that you know, yeah It's hard for butter or I mean we put butter in a pan and then yeah You just got cranked up and it's pretty disgusting And very mentally lot going on
08:09.305 --> 08:13.894
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources report, the cleanup cost approximately $550,000.
08:13.954 --> 08:20.286
[SPEAKER_00]: The damages included bakery products, ham, and 1,000 pounds of and hydros ammonia.
08:20.547 --> 08:26.959
[SPEAKER_00]: A colorless, highly pungent and toxic gas commonly used as agricultural fertilizer and refrigerant.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All in all, it took about 20 hours to contain the blaze, and eight days to put up.
08:32.628 --> 08:34.411
[SPEAKER_00]: And eight days to put the fire completely out.
08:34.671 --> 08:45.788
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks in part to plenty of fuel from the insulation around all of the cold storage units and food, of course, lots of food, and beyond that, 20 million pounds of butter.
08:46.569 --> 08:48.272
[SPEAKER_00]: The fallout after this break.
08:49.265 --> 09:01.409
[SPEAKER_00]: The following few weeks were dedicated to cleaning up, hauling huge piles of meat and rubble to the Dane County landfill, staying ahead of rain and heat that remelted, congealed butter, and gradually pumping that butter out of the stormwater drainage area.
09:01.449 --> 09:07.240
[SPEAKER_00]: So the aftermath was bleak and disgusting and very, very smelly.
09:07.220 --> 09:17.216
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, Arson investigators ruled the fire to be an accident that originated near a battery propelled forklift, but the EPA likened the event to a massive oil spill in scope and severity.
09:17.256 --> 09:28.654
[SPEAKER_00]: Two weeks after the fire, Ted Amman of the State Department of Natural Resources said efforts to clear the spoiling meat products and keep the melted butter out of nearby waterways were a quote, success.
09:28.938 --> 09:30.302
[SPEAKER_00]: And I suppose that was true.
09:30.342 --> 09:34.635
[SPEAKER_00]: The DNR monitored the nearby waterways very few fish died after the fire, a great thing.
09:35.177 --> 09:37.504
[SPEAKER_00]: Most waterways were protected, another great thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Most importantly, however, nobody died and nobody was badly injured, also a wonderful thing.
09:44.395 --> 09:46.098
[SPEAKER_00]: But the area was pretty wrecked.
09:46.499 --> 09:57.259
[SPEAKER_00]: The fire and subsequent dairy flood caused major financial losses, including 7.5 million in property damages, that's 17.7 million in 2025, and nearly 1 million in fire control costs.
09:57.279 --> 09:59.984
[SPEAKER_00]: That's 2.36 million in 2025, yes.
10:00.064 --> 10:02.168
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing some inflation math here.
10:02.148 --> 10:04.250
[SPEAKER_00]: The cleanup cost approximately $550,000.
10:04.290 --> 10:14.402
[SPEAKER_00]: That's $1.3 million in 2025 and was mostly paid by the central storage and warehouse company and a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
10:15.743 --> 10:20.989
[SPEAKER_00]: In their attempt to clean up all the butter, Madison Fire Department was forced to throw away nearly all of their firefighter gear.
10:21.790 --> 10:30.079
[SPEAKER_00]: Fire Department Chief Stephen Davis said since he was still, you know, new to the job, that he got stuck with steam cleaning the hoses that weren't
10:30.700 --> 10:39.251
[SPEAKER_00]: When people talk about this event, they talk about how insane it was, but they always hit upon the fire and floods most powerful short-term legacy, the smell.
10:39.972 --> 10:44.037
[SPEAKER_00]: Davis said the smell was rotten, a mixture of burned butter, baked ham, and cranberries.
10:44.978 --> 10:52.528
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, on a hot human day in the summer, you can still once in a while catch the vague stench almost 30 years later, even though the building's been remodeled, he said.
10:53.189 --> 10:55.071
[SPEAKER_00]: We used it as a resting and staging area.
10:55.612 --> 11:00.218
[SPEAKER_00]: The firefighters that would come back there were just covered in the stuff and it just
11:00.755 --> 11:07.208
[SPEAKER_00]: and informal year and survey by the Madison Capital Times, named the Butterfire the most important local news story of 1991.
11:07.769 --> 11:22.037
[SPEAKER_00]: In October 2011, more than 20 years after the flames, the Central Storage and Warehouse Company finished reconstruction on the damaged area, along with creating, adding a 42,000 square foot freezer.
11:22.017 --> 11:33.317
[SPEAKER_00]: David's memories were so vivid even decades after that he admitted that he admitted that after all that he saw, all that he experienced, he had to reassess his relationship with butter and some other foods.
11:33.838 --> 11:40.750
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, it was between that and all the hands that we saw floating in the river of butter, he said, I didn't need ham for a little while after that.
11:40.990 --> 11:46.219
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's Wisconsin, so a little while, a couple days, couple weeks, who's to say.
11:46.199 --> 11:51.746
[SPEAKER_00]: People on Reddit and Facebook still talk about this event and the impact it had on themselves and Madison as a whole.
11:52.787 --> 11:59.936
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's Marsha Rummel in a Facebook post, quote, I lived about three miles away from Central Storage, a time of the fire, near the Yajara River.
12:00.637 --> 12:05.022
[SPEAKER_00]: In the following days, bits of greasy charred paper wrappers floated down into my art.
12:05.883 --> 12:09.067
[SPEAKER_00]: I worked right next door at the warehouse behind Colvers and Cottage Grove Road.
12:09.468 --> 12:13.793
[SPEAKER_00]: I took TV news reporter Joel Dispane up on our warehouse roof to report on the fire.
12:13.958 --> 12:18.026
[SPEAKER_00]: We were up there for about two minutes before some sort of fire marshal yelled at us to get off of there.
12:18.066 --> 12:23.396
[SPEAKER_00]: Ten minutes later, the entire east wall collapsed, sending an avalanche of canned hams onto our lot.
12:23.937 --> 12:27.464
[SPEAKER_00]: I was young and poor at the time and ate the canned ham for quite a few months after the fire.
12:27.524 --> 12:34.617
[SPEAKER_00]: The concrete columns that supported the overpass had melted butter stains, going up six feet high on them for decades after the fire.
12:34.597 --> 12:39.042
[SPEAKER_00]: But most notably, as we've said, people's collective memories focus on the smell.
12:40.043 --> 12:41.765
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Denise Karn's via Facebook.
12:42.385 --> 12:42.966
[SPEAKER_00]: That smell.
12:43.486 --> 12:43.607
[SPEAKER_00]: Ugh.
12:44.127 --> 12:47.611
[SPEAKER_00]: For months afterwards, during the summer, the entire area smelled like rancid milk.
12:48.492 --> 12:54.318
[SPEAKER_00]: Said air in May 16, you could feel the heat of the fire from Highway 51, and the black smoke was so thick.
12:54.819 --> 13:00.925
[SPEAKER_00]: I always thought the smell from Oscar Meyer across the highway was ronchy, but that burning dairy smell, disgusting.
13:00.905 --> 13:02.709
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside was Compton on Reddit.
13:03.110 --> 13:04.332
[SPEAKER_00]: I will never forget that smell.
13:04.593 --> 13:05.535
[SPEAKER_00]: It was in the air for months.
13:05.976 --> 13:12.289
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to middle school about a mile from the fire and by the start of the school year, the smell of burnt, spoiled dairy was everywhere still.
13:13.532 --> 13:16.618
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the story of Madison's Great Butter Fire.
