Firefighters battle a structure fire at 153 NW State Ave. in Chehalis.
Workers from Cowlitz Clean Sweep, an industrial and emergency spill clean-up service, evaluate the oil runoff from Sunday's CHS, Inc. fire on Monday morning in Chehalis.
Too little evidence remains to identify a cause of a May 1 fire that destroyed a Cenex building housing about 2,000 gallons of oil products in Chehalis, said Chehalis Fire Chief Ken Cardinale Thursday.
The cause of the fire is officially listed as undetermined.
“Too much damage was done for the investigators to find what the cause was even after interviewing the business owners and employees,” Cardinale said.
Fire crews responded at 10:34 p.m. May 1 to a fire alarm at Cenex, also a CHS Inc. facility, in the 100 block of Northwest State Avenue in Chehalis.
According to the Chehalis Police Department, a person reported hearing a bang and seeing flames.
Crews began fighting the fire, but soon stopped actively trying to extinguish the flames after noticing a large amount of oil runoff in the area. Instead, they let the oil burn itself out while keeping the fire from spreading.
The fire department has not yet received an estimate on the monetary damage from the fire, Cardinale said.
While Cardinale said fire crews were able to contain the majority of the spill by not spraying more water at the blaze, soil in the area was contaminated.
“The cleanup effort is still ongoing,” he said. “They pretty much have cleaned up the site itself where the Cenex building was, along with the adjacent lots.”
Cleanup crews are waiting on results from soil samples sent to the state Department of Ecology, then plan to remove the contaminated material and regrade the site with new soil, Cardinale said.
Crews are also working to clean up a water retention pond contaminated by runoff northwest of the site. That work should be completed this week, Cardinale said.
