CUDAHY, Wis. --
The situation at the Patrick Cudahy Inc. plant is mostly under control after a massive fire prompted an evacuation order on Monday.
Firefighters who spent long hours at the front lines are finally getting a chance to relax and replay the dangerous and frantic events of the past couple days back in their minds.
"It was so smoke charged we really couldn't see anything," Cudahy firefighter Andrew Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez was one of the first firefighters in the Cudahy plant on Sunday night.
He said between the size of the building and all the smoke the blaze was hard to find, and once they located the fire it was even harder to get to.
"If the fire would have been anywhere in the building but the crawl space we would have put it out," Rodriguez said.
He said they first tried to attack the fire from below, but the water was not getting through the thick wood ceiling so they moved to the roof.
"When we started attacking it from the top and the roof collapsed it took out the sprinkler system," Rodriguez said.
That's when things turned dangerous, with the sprinklers out the fire and smoke grew. Twenty firefighters who were on the roof were pulled off in the nick of time.
"When it started getting pretty smoky and hot up there, that's when the chief told everyone to get off the roof and minutes later it collapsed down to the fourth floor. It was a good thing the chief told us to get down when he did someone was looking out for us," Rodriguez said.
Through it all, firefighters from dozens of departments responded to help and provide relief.
Many of the first responders from Cudahy worked 20 hours straight, only stopping for short breaks.
"That's as close as you get to sleep during one of these operations, sitting in rehab for maybe an hour with your pack on, catch 15 minutes if you are lucky," Cudahy firefighter Mark Siggelkow said.
The Cudahy fire chief said the police department will work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the state fire marshal's office to determine the cause of the fire.
He said it will be difficult to figure but guessed it started in the roof area, and that the fire may have gone undetected for a while.
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