A possible explosion and fire caused severe damage to a furniture refinishing factory here on July 25.
Wellington Advertiser circulation manager Catharine Goss saw the blaze as she was leaving work just after 5pm.
Goss saw, “flames shooting out of the building” on the northeast corner of Gartshore Street and Dickson Drive.
As she pulled over, she saw the back wall collapse.
“It was really black after the wall collapsed, because it let out a huge plume,” said Goss.
Another Advertiser employee called 911.
Centre Wellington Fire Rescue was notified at 5:20pm and all units from the Fergus and Elora stations attended, along with a pumper from Wellington North’s Arthur station.
“We don’t know exactly what happened yet,” said deputy fire chief Jonathan Karn on July 25. “We think there may have been an explosion based on the wall that’s laying on the ground.
“The building owner’s here and our fire prevention [official] is here talking to them and we called the fire marshal because we suspect an explosion.”
The building contains a furniture refinishing business.
“So some of the things they use … may have been a part of what’s happening – so different chemicals for refinishing,” Karn said. “That may have been what happened.
“We don’t know yet … but we definitely have some materials in there that could have caused that.”
He said the fire department turned off hydro and natural gas to the building while they were figuring out what caused the blaze.
When crews arrived they saw vehicles in the building’s driveway, but after an office search they confirmed no one was inside the building.
The people working in the building left mid-afternoon and were accounted for at the evening fire scene. There were no injuries reported.
“When we got here the wall was already out and we could see a lot of fire inside the building from that open wall so we started our fire attack from that area,” Karn said.
“We basically suppressed the fire from the outside.”
Both Karn and investigators with the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshal (OFM) attended the scene and said on July 26 the fire was not suspicious.
“We’re going to look at cause, origin and circumstances,” OFM fire investigator Ryan Lock said on July 26.
He noted the fire marshal’s office will compile “witness information, accounts, physical evidence, video, photography” and analyze everything to “try to find the answers for the cause … the origin … and the circumstances.”
Lock said he didn’t have a timeline for when the cause would be known. And neither Karn nor Lock were able to give a damage estimate.
“It’s not like there was a ton of contents,” Karn said. “However … the structural engineer from the OFM is … there today, so they’ll be assessing the rest of the building and with the fact that one of the walls likely blew out and how is that impacting the rest of the structure?
“There’s a big difference whether you’re just repairing a wall or tearing the whole building down because it’s not structurally safe.”
Lock added the owner of the furniture refinishing business was leasing the building from the owner.
“That comes into play with damage estimates,” he said.
As of July 26 Lock said he was unable to determine if there had been an explosion and whether it had caused the fire or was a result of a fire.
“We need to ensure that we understand is it the chicken before the egg or is it the egg before the chicken?” he said. “And at the end of our investigation that will be some of the criteria that we’re looking at.”
He said the investigation would take into account that the businesses contains many different chemicals.
“We’ll have to look at that … Every chemical and every product has a different property makeup and there’s data sheets that will help us to be able to determine what the care handling, storage instructions are and we’ll have to factor that into our investigation as well.”
Karn said all 35 firefighters on the scene on July 25 had cleared by 9:45pm. But the fire was not without its challenges.
Having a wall blown out created a risk for firefighters, Karn explained.
“With this already being an explosion, obviously we had one wall that was blown out, so that compromises other walls potentially,” Karn said. “So collapse is always an issue for us.”
He also said the hot weather was a challenge.
“We bring lots of people so we’re able to rotate them through rehab,” he said. “Get them working for a bit and then rotate them in and out of the jobs.”
Karn commended his team.
“The guys did a fantastic job getting water on the fire really quickly and getting it knocked down,” he said. “Obviously that wall being missing helped us a lot.”
