Heather Wright/The Independent

The cause of a million dollar industrial fire in Petrolia will go down as undetermined.

That’s according to Petrolia/North Enniskillen Fire Chief Rick Cousins.

Wednesday, a large drive shed at the back of the Concrete Systems property on Centre Street caught fire just before 2 pm. Cousins says one person had been working in the building, also was used by Total Driveway Maintenance, about an hour before the fire started. When they returned, they found the building in flames.

Cousins says about 50 firefighters from Petrolia, Wyoming and Brigden, worked to control the fire. They attacked the blaze from above with the tower units from both Brigden and Petrolia. By 6 pm, a backhoe was brought in. “We had an excavator in here to move some debris around so we could get get at the flames, because the flames are underneath the metal,” the chief tells The Independent.

Cousins says they were on the scene until 10 pm and then called back to the scene when the hot spots flared up again. They finally cleared the scene after 12:30 pm.

What started the fire is difficult to pinpoint. “I can’t determine from this – the way it’s been tore apart, and the way that we’ve we had to get the excavator in here so we could get water underneath the metal,” says Cousins.

The building is destroyed and a substantial loss for Concrete Systems, he added. “From the size of the building and the construction type, it is probably around a million dollars loss.”

No one was injured in the fire.