Bourbon continued to burn on Thursday after two Jim Beam warehouses caught fire on Tuesday, and firefighters say they’re going to let the flames burn out to mitigate harmful effects on the environmental. “At this point, the only thing left burning is the distilled spirits, so it’s a clean burn and there is less impact to the atmosphere than there would be if there were attempts to extinguish the fire with water,” Woodford County Emergency Management director Drew Chandler told WKYT. Early firefighting efforts using water are thought to have contributed to “potentially toxic runoff” into the Kentucky River. Jim Beam told The Lexington Herald-Leader the warehouses held 45,000 barrels of “relatively young whiskey from the Jim Beam mash bill.” Officials say a lighting strike likely caused the fire.
Read it at WKYT
