Early evening fire destroys TrusTek

The cause of a Thursday blaze that destroyed Bonners Ferry business TrussTek remains undetermined, said to North Bench Volunteer Fire Association Chief Bill McCabe.

The TrussTek fire located at  64679 Highway 2 was within the boundaries of North Bench Fire Association.

“Boundary County Sheriff detective Mike Naumann said they are leaning toward accidental,” said McCabe.

 McCabe said that his volunteer firefighters gathered at 6 p.m. to begin routine training in the station across the highway from TrussTek, a few minutes later saw smoke and then flames spewing from the top of the main TrussTek building. 

Boundary County Sheriff dispatch the call came in at 6:16 p.m.

McCabe knew they were going to need help and called for mutual aid (assistance from the other volunteer fire associations and districts as well as the city fire department).

Curely Creek, Hall Mountain are fire associations and can respond for mutual aid anywhere in the county. South Boundary Fire District has a contract to provide assistance to North Bench which a little different than mutual aid, siad McCabe.  The city fire department has to be called upon by the sheriff or mayor.

 “I knew right off the bat that I needed to get a call out for mutual aid, it is such a huge warehouse,  I knew it would take a lot to put that one out,” McCabe said.

“I was on my way to report it to dispatch and right when I reached dispatched they toned us out,” he said. “They had so much stuff stored in the building, I knew there was huge fire load there.”

“With mutual aid we responded to the fire within five minutes.” Our crews were there in shifts until Friday around 6:30 p.m., mopping up,” said McCabe.

 They also assisted TrussTek personnel with clean up on Saturday and had a truck on site to cool down hot spots.

 The 40,000 square foot shop was built with lightweight truss construction. Inside the building, there was a lot of flammable material setting off small explosions, limiting what the fire fighters could do to extinguish the fire, McCabe said.

They used about 8,000 gallons per minute at the beginning to knock down the fire, he said. 

“A building that size would require more like 13,330 gallons of water per minute to knock it down, because it was fully engulfed there wasn’t much we could do.”

McCabe said each of the four engines can pump out 1,500 gallons of water per minute, which wasn’t quite enough to save the building but they were able to save some decking and lumber from exposure.

Since 1990 TrussTek has  manufactured and engineerd roof and floor trusses for Idaho, Montana and Washington. 

President of the company, Ted Byler said plans are in the works to rebuild.

“We look to be back up at 20 percent production in about 10 days or so,” said Byler. By three months we are shooting for 60 percent and hopefully by next spring at 100 percent.”

According to Byler they hope to see the new TrussTek buildings start to go up within two weeks. Temporary offices are set up on the property and are in operation.

“A big part of the reason we are building back is because of the support of the community and we employ 35 to 40 people and they want to get back to work, said Byler.  “It is a challenging time to do that because of economy and we feel we can make the business profitable and employ people in the community.”

Byler said on Saturday over 100 people came out to help clean up after the fire.

“It was amazing how many people in the community came out to help, we’re going to come back, we have lost a lot but we are going to keep going,” Byler said.

This is the second business destroyed by  fire in Boundary County in Aug.

Riverside Auto’s 25-year-old building was destroyed in an Aug. 3 fire.

“It was about 6 p.m. when I smelled smoke then I  saw smoke coming from the peak of the roof of the building while I was driving down the highway,” said employee Jonathan Holdeman. “ Everyone was gone for the day and the building was locked up, I ran around back just to make sure everyone was gone.”

“When the call came in we already had gear on and trucks up for our training and were able to hop on and get to the call,” said South Boundary Fire fighter David Wilson.

Marcus Byler, part owner of TrussTek, watched in shock and was saddened by the fire but relieved that quick thinking recovered two of the company’s main database servers.

“This will help us to rebuild and contact our customers so we don’t get set back too far, these databases show customers, ongoing jobs and job history and we back up daily,” said Byler.

“One of the owners wanted to go inside and try to retrieve a fire safe, but I saw the soot build up and condensation on the windows and knew it was about to flash over  (simultaneous combustion of all contents in the room) and couldn’t allow him to go inside,” said McCabe. 

About two seconds later it flashed over and blew out the windows.”

Emma and her son Evan Schlabach, who works as a designer at TrussTek, went to the scene after receiving a call from her husband about the blaze.

“I have worked here three and a half years and I am a little shocked about this,” said Schlabach.

“This is kind of devastating, the important thing though is people are safe and were all out of the building,” said Emma Schlabach.

Travis Marble said he has worked for TrussTek for two years as a sawyer, cutting lumber for the trusses. 

“We only worked a half day today so a lot of people went home already, some people stayed out in the back building to work but luckily that building never got touched,” said Marble.

Bonners Ferry Fire Chief Pat Warkentin was grateful to The Bread Basket Bakery and members of local Mennonite churches who fed all the crews who had been fighting the blaze.

  “They did a wonderful job for the fire fighters, and we all appreciated their efforts,” Warkentin said.