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Investigators are continuing to search for the cause of the fire that destroyed a storage building in North Manchester Wednesday.
Eleven fire departments responded to the blaze at Elm and Fourth streets at the building owned by Midwest Lumber and Dimension. The building was formerly Woodcraft Products.
Investigators from the North Manchester Fire Department and the State Fire Marshal's Office are removing debris from the site to search for a cause.
According to North Manchester Fire Chief Jack Fetrow, investigators are targeting a southeast room in the complex. They believe the fire may have started somewhere in the middle of the room, one of the original buildings in the manufacturing complex.
Firefighters were able to save around 10,000 square feet of the 55,000-foot plant.
When firefighters arrived on the scene at 12:53 p.m., flames were visible through the windows and there was already heavy smoke. When the fire began to come through the roof, Fetrow ordered fire crews to fight the blaze only from the outside of the building because he feared the roof would collapse.
The brick and wood building, built in the 1940s, had a bow-string roof, a rounded design commonly used in large buildings or bowling alleys. The design is used to span a large area without using middle supports. However, the roofs fail quickly when there is a fire, Fetrow said, because of the lamination used to glue the rounded rafters together.
In less than 15 minutes, the roof did collapse.
"We did the 'surround and drown,'" said Fetrow. "I couldn't risk the safety of firefighters."
It took fire crews more than two hours to get the fire under control.
No injuries were reported after the blaze.
Fetrow said there was only some pallet-grade lumber in the building along with some machinery, including a forklift.
Damages are being estimated at up to $125,000.
There were no employees in the building at the time of the fire. Investigators are interviewing a contractor who has been removing some of the original equipment from the building to see who may have been in the building prior to the blaze.
Fetrow estimates that there were around 100 firefighters who responded to the call, including crews from Silver Lake and Jackson Township.
