At approximately 1 p.m. on Sunday, January 23rd, fire dispatch was alerted to a structural fire at the Highline Mushroom plant, north of Cochrane.

According to the District Fire Chief at Rocky View County, Dax Huba, station 154 from Crossfield was the first to arrive on the scene. 

"I was responding with station 107 out of Balzac. When we arrived on the scene, we arrived on a 250,000, square-foot building with heavy smoke and flames showing from the roof," Huba said. "We had multiple departments on the scene, trying to try to extinguish the fire, but the building was so large that we couldn't get elevated master streams into certain areas of the collapsed roof."

(Photos provided by Trevor Murkin)(Photos provided by Trevor Murkin)

Due to the size of the fire, Huba said fire crews will still be actively extinguishing the fire today and an investigation will take time.

"The investigation has started on all the physical evidence on the exterior of the building, but we'll need some heavy equipment to start pulling walls and making entry into areas where there was quite a lot of fire," he said.

There are plans to interview workers to get a better understanding of where and how the fire started. Huba said it is much too early to give any indication of where the fire originated from. At the most critical point, he estimates there were 35 firefighters on the scene.

(Photos provided by Trevor Murkin)(Photos provided by Trevor Murkin)
(Photos provided by Trevor Murkin)(Photos provided by Trevor Murkin)

"We had multiple crews; We had Carstairs Fire [Department], Crossfield Fire [Department], we had Airdrie [Fire Department]  helping us out, 107 station out of Balzac, 108 station from Irricana, 105 station from Madden, and a callback crew we brought in on overtime from 107 station Balzac as well," Huba said. "It was a lot of apparatus and a lot of people to keep track of."

One person was treated for smoke inhalation, though they were immediately released after having received medical treatment.

"This is one of the larger building fires that we have had attended to in a long time," Huba said. "It was also just difficult because of the proximity and the fact that we had to bring water into the site."