Weary firefighters returned Friday morning to the scene of the massive blaze that destroyed Seneca Hardwood Lumber Co. in Rockland Township about 10 hours earlier.
The blaze reignited at about 7 a.m. Friday, just about a half hour after the last units had cleared the scene after fighting the fire since it erupted a little before 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
At least 14 fire departments from Venango, Clarion and Butler counties responded Friday morning to lumber that was burning and threatening to ignite part of a building on the Seneca Hardwood complex that had escaped the enormous fire the night before.
After fighting the fire all night Thursday, volunteers spent Friday morning “mopping up” the blaze, Rockland fire chief Kevin Williams said. Rockland was the lead department at the scene.
Williams said the main building that burned was full of stacked lumber and couldn’t be saved. That lumber was continuing to burn, endangering another area.
The goal was to push the burning lumber away from a building that hadn’t burned into the area the fire had already destroyed as a way to contain the blaze which would eventually burn out, Williams said.
One fireman at the scene quipped that there wasn’t enough water in Pennsylvania to completely put out the fire.
At least half a dozen tankers full of water lined up to supply Emlenton’s ladder truck with water as firefighters battled the smoking remnants of the blaze that had consumed the shop the night before.
Several more tankers were in line to supply water to firemen, many of whom were from the Rockland department, as they hosed down the burning lumber and used a backhoe to push it away from a building that was still standing.
When a tanker had emptied its load onto the burning, smoldering debris, it would turn around and head to Kahle Lake to refill and return to the scene.
Most firefighters either hadn’t been able to go home at all or had only been home a short time when they were called out again Friday morning.
The scene was cleared for the second time at about 2:30 p.m. Friday, Venango County 911 said.
Then, at about 5 p.m., several departments were called to the scene again for reports of smoldering embers on the roof of the collapsed workshop, according to Venango County 911.
A 911 representative said the firefighters were returning to take care of hot spots before they could get out of hand because of all the sawdust in the building.
Chief says cause unknown
The building was unoccupied when the fire broke out a little before 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
“The building was fully involved when we got here,” Williams said.
As of Friday morning, Williams said the cause of the fire in the large workshop wasn’t known. He estimated the shop to have been about 300 feet wide and 800 feet long.
The building was full of lumber and was destroyed, Williams said.
Other buildings on the property, including the main office and several other out buildings as well as many stacks of lumber outside on the property, were spared from the fire.
Dozens of fire companies and hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze Thursday night at the landmark business, which has been owned and operated by generations of the Hepler family since 1959.
One firefighter sustained a minor leg injury, Williams said.
Two people were transported from the scene by ambulance, according to Venango County 911.
Because there was no water source close at hand at the property, acquiring enough water to contain and put out the fire was a persistent challenge.
Seneca Hardwood Road where the business is located became a thoroughfare of tankers driving in and out to retrieve and deliver thousands of gallons of water at a constant pace.
Williams said they first pumped water from a nearby pond until the pond was very low, then the tankers went to fill up at the Seneca Volunteer Fire Department building.
They pumped water in Seneca until the water supply there was so low that a boil water advisory would have needed to be issued if they had continued to pump, Williams said.
“When they began to get water from the creek it was up to the guy’s chest. They drained the creek until it was only a few inches deep,” Williams said.
“Each tanker can carry about 2,000 gallons of water,” Williams said. By the time Pine Creek was drained the fire was mostly out, he said.
To get more water they “sucked the pond dry,” Williams said.
The ladder truck from the Oil City Fire Department alone poured close to 1.2 million gallons of water on the fire, Oil City Chief Mark Hicks said.
“When you battle a blaze like that you need a lot of water quickly to get ahead of the fire,” Hicks said.
He added that it was a very hot, large fire because there was such a large amount of kiln dried lumber burning.
After exhausting other closer sources of water, the fire trucks headed to Kahle Lake to get water to fight the last remnants of the fire.
Several trucks also ran out of diesel fuel while battling the blaze, Williams said.
The chief said they had to get creative to refill the trucks, and Williams took diesel from a tank on his farm to refill some of the trucks.
Williams said many departments from Venango, Clarion, Butler, Mercer and Armstrong counties responded to the fire. Nearly two dozen vehicles and other equipment from Venango and Butler counties were at the scene, according to 911.
Seneca Hardwood started out 61 years ago as a small mill supplying hardwood products to regional customers. It grew over the years into a nationwide supplier of hardwood products, and its primary focus in recent times has been as a manufacturer of hardwood flooring.
Joe Kolesar, owner of the Hardwood Mall near Emlenton that is tied in with Seneca Hardwood, said Friday the Hepler family is taking messages and is in the process of regrouping and figuring out what the next steps will be for the business.
