A massive fire has gutted a warehouse building on the corner of Smith Street and Dominion Avenue on the edge of downtown Yorkton.
No one was hurt in the blaze, but now fire crews are what could’ve sparked the fire.
“We’re not aware of any injuries,” said Yorkton Fire Chief Trevor Morrissey. “The information we were provided on scene is the building was typically not occupied.”
The fire broke out shortly before 8pm Thursday night, destroying everything inside and sending thick smoke billowing through the streets of Yorkton. At times, the smoke was dense enough to create what looked like a blanket of fog over the city, creating hassle for both drivers and emergency crews.
“All the smoke, it was going up in a column to begin with,” Morrissey said. “It was actually pushing straight down and out, so it was kind of an upside down mushroom cloud, it hit the ground and then spread straight out.”
Morrissey says the brick building was used for storage.
“It was kind of a variety of things, a lot of older furniture, a lot of plastics and that just comes from packaging and what have you,” Morrissey said.
The investigation into exactly what caused the warehouse to go up in flames is still ongoing, but the Fire Department says because the building wasn’t hooked up to gas or electrical sources, the possibilities of what could’ve ignited the fire are more limited.
“We have some ideas that we’re going to be working on over the next little while, we need to obviously investigate things further. We have a lot of questioning to do,” Morrissey said. “We have camera footage that we’ll be looking at and stuff like that to see what was going on.”
As the investigation continues, the area is now fenced off, and the Fire Department is advising anyone passing by to keep their distance from the heavily damaged building, as they say it’s in poor structural shape.
With files from CTV Yorkton's Cole Davenport
