Pacific BioEnergy continues to look for answers following a fire at its Prince George plant on Saturday.
According to the company, the incident was detected by employees just after 8:30 AM.
The blaze was observed at the top of a bucket elevator which was transporting wood pellets.
In an interview with My PG Now, PacBio President John Stirling states the fire did spread to the area thanks to the windy conditions that day in Prince George.
“We had one area where we had some stuff in our electrical room impacted by some fire there, so we did have some activity and then we had those under control by two or three o’clock in the afternoon.”
The damage from the blaze according to the local fire department was estimated at $750,000, however, Stirling believes the number could be higher.
“The estimate of the damage of the fire came from the fire department, not from us and we are still in the stage of assessing what the damage is and we’re going very slowly, carefully, safely to we make sure as we pull apart the equipment and to take a look at it so we can understand why the fire started in the first place.”
“We’re right in the middle of taking things apart still and we’re still contacting vendors so that we can put the plant into safe operation.”
Prince George fire crews extinguished both fires and stayed on scene for several hours.
PacBio will continue to monitor its sight and equipment as well as focus on the impacted areas.
The plant is not in production right now but employees have returned to work.