Pacific Seafood processing plant workers are back on the job in Newport after a fire Sunday in one of the company’s buildings forced an evacuation of the Yaquina Bay waterfront.

Sunday’s fire, in a building used for freezing fish, raised worries that ammonia might have mixed into the smoke. Those concerns prompted an hours-long evacuation and fueled fears that the city’s only major seafood processor could be down for days – or longer.

The fishing industry on the Oregon coast, which sends products all over the world, is breathing a sigh of relief that it won’t have to problem-solve a prolonged outage at the plant.

“Although the damage from the fire is severe, at this point it appears to be limited to a single building,” Ashton Meier, Pacific Seafood’s vice president of resource sales and processing, told OPB in an email. “We are very happy to be able to report that all of our team members are already back at work today and we are processing as usual in all of our other facilities along the Newport bayfront.”

The Clackamas-based company is one of the nation’s largest seafood processors. Pacific Seafood employs more than 3,000 people and operates more than 40 locations that harvest, process and distribute seafood, according to its website.

Pacific Seafood packaged fish products can be found in the frozen food aisles of many grocery stores.

The company operates at least four other buildings along the Yaquina Bay waterfront, none of which were affected by the fire. Meier said there will not be any disruptions to fishing boats offloading and selling groundfish and other seafood.

Fire’s impact along the waterfront

At least some community members affected by Sunday’s fire say they are facing disruptions of their own, however.

The Coffee House, on the corner of Southwest Bay Boulevard and Hatfield Drive, would normally open at 8 a.m. to serve coffee and breakfast on one of Oregon’s major working and tourist waterfronts.

But on Monday morning it was closed. Husband-and-wife Daniel and Aurea Romero, the owners of the restaurant, were walking in and around the building to check for any lingering damage.

When the Pacific Seafood building across the street caught fire Sunday, it blanketed the restaurant, Daniel Romero said.

Erick Machuca, the manager at the Coffee House, said he was working when he saw sparks and heard what sounded like a loud explosion from a power line right next to the storage building that caught fire.

A few minutes later, he saw smoke and then quickly called emergency services.

“We decided to shut down the restaurant before the police came because we knew there was fire coming in,” Machuca said. “And then a minute later one of the Newport Police Department officers came to us and said we need to evacuate.”

Other than dirty windows from the soot, the restaurant seemed fine on Monday, Romero said. But they’re still figuring out next steps.

“There are a lot of things that need to be thrown away,” he said, “and be a total loss because it was exposed to the smoke.”

Fire fans fears over consolidating industry

More than 1,100 Oregonians worked in seafood processing in 2025, according to the Oregon Employment Department. While that’s a small number in the state’s workforce of nearly 2 million, it represents an important anchor in the state’s fishing industry.

“You need healthy fishermen to have healthy processors,” Heather Mann, executive director of Midwater Trawlers, told OPB. “You need healthy processors to have healthy fishermen. They are inextricably linked.”

Oregon fishermen sell to fewer than a dozen major processors operating in the Pacific Northwest, which then ship Oregon seafood all over the world. Over the last two decades, the seafood processing industry has consolidated so that around 85% of all processing in Oregon happens at just three ports: Astoria, Newport and Charleston.

On Sunday, Mann was among the Newport residents who had to evacuate their homes due to the fire at Pacific Seafood.

“We had police officers driving up and down the streets with their sirens on and loudspeakers saying, ‘You need to evacuate, homeowners, you need to evacuate.’”

Mann, who has worked in the fishing industry for more than 15 years, said she spent her evacuation considering how the community could respond if the fire put Pacific Seafood out of commission for a long time. She’s relieved that’s not the case.

“I can’t imagine what that would look like for Newport,” Mann said. “It terrifies me.”

Having Pacific Seafood along the waterfront is a boon to Newport, she said.

“We are one of the only authentic working waterfronts left — like really authentic, where you’re going to be stopped in traffic because there are forklifts loading trucks.”

Taunette Dixon, who sells groundfish and crab to the company from her 63-foot fishing vessel, the Tauny Ann, also emphasized Pacific Seafood’s importance to the community. Dixon’s family has worked with the company for more than 50 years.

“It is really hard for us to travel to other ports to unload,” Dixon said. “The ease that Pacific brings us, being able to unload in our own area where we’re fishing out of, really helps as far as fuel costs.”

No other big processing plants nearby

Seth Turpen, a deckhand on the Mandy J fishing vessel, said Sunday’s fire highlighted Pacific Seafood’s importance to the fishing community. Turpen was on his way to work when a friend called and told him about the fire. He rushed to the dock, but the road was already shut down.

“We couldn’t get down to the boats,” Turpen recalled Monday morning as he and other Mandy J crew members worked to get the boat ready to switch over from shrimp to groundfish like black cod.

If the Pacific Seafood plant were to close down, it would have an instant effect on not just the area’s fishermen, he said, but also on truck drivers and other industries that work with the company.

Turpen said if the Mandy J couldn’t sell its fish to Pacific Seafood, it would have to try and sell it in Washington state.

“It’s the only place that can buy anything,” Turpen said. “We can’t really sell it anywhere else.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/26/newports-pacific-seafood-processing-plant-is-back-to-regular-operations-after-fire-forces-evacuation/