It took more than 12 hours for Port Moody firefighters to fully extinguish a blaze that broke out at the Flavelle sawmill Wednesday morning and sent plumes of smoke across the city.
The stubborn, smokey fire was burning around the facility's planing mill and crews had to rip up parts of the floors and walls to get at the source.
"It was a long, hard, frustrating fight," said Port Moody Fire Chief Remo Faedo. "I think the call came in at 10:30 a.m. and we finally put it out around 11:20 p.m.
There was plenty of sawdust to fuel the blaze and he said crews were concerned about embers igniting fires on other parts of the property. The yard was full of lumber and Faedo added that it would not have taken much for the flames to spread.
The large amount of smoke made it difficult to get at the source of the blaze, which was burning in a crawlspace underneath the planing mill.
"All you could see was smoke," Faedo said. "We knew there was fire, we just didn't know exactly where it was."
Nobody was injured in the blaze and 30 crew members and eight volunteers were required to contain it. Firefighters from Coquitlam were also put on standby and were ready to deploy if necessary, Faedo said.
The planing mill will likely need to be rebuilt but he noted that most of the employees at the Flavelle facility work on other parts of the property. Faedo noted that when he visited the site Thursday, many of the workers were back on the job.
Fire investigators were still investigating yesterday but determining what started the fire will be difficult, he said.
"The tricky part is going to be determining what the heat source was," Faedo said. "To be honest with you, it is going to be almost impossible to determine that."
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