By Angela Hill

UPDATE: Early morning blaze at sawmill

Jul 29, 2011 | 7:43 AM

An early morning fire caused damage at a Carrier Forest Products sawmill, east of Prince Albert.

“It’s local to one area of the equipment … and it ended up causing a lot of damage to the equipment that was there,” said Ward Howat, deputy fire chief with Buckland Fire Department.

The cause and the full extent of the damage are still unknown, but the fire department is joining forces with the provincial office of the fire commissioner and the insurance company to investigate the cause.

“We don’t know anything right at this point, it’s too early to tell even what started it,” said Darrel McKone, manager of the mill site.

What he does know is the location of the fire.

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“It is the main sawing equipment of the sawmill section,” he said.

Operations at the mill site are suspended until after the investigation and clean up occur.

The Prince Albert Fire Department was the first to arrive to the site around 5 a.m. today.

“It was a small fire, but the damage was already quite extensive,” said Curtis Mickelson, battalion chief with the department.

There was smoke and light flames coming through the mill deck area as firefighters arrived, he said.

It took about 15 to 20 minutes to knock down the blaze, Mickelson said.

Buckland arrived about 30 minutes later and assumed command of the scene because the site is in their jurisdiction.

“It’s a fairly large job when we get into anything dealing with wood chips, bark … it’s piled up underneath their machines, so there was lots of hot spots that we have to work and put out, with lots of water,” Howat said.

Having a fire in equipment like at the mill is dangerous because of the electricity, he said.

“We had to wait until SaskPower came on scene so we could make sure nothing was energized, due to the fire, before we could do an attack on the equipment and see the extent of the damage.”

The 16 firefighters from Buckland were on scene until about noon to make sure all the hot spots were out and weren’t at risk of flaring up again.

ahill@panow.com