West Rutland Fire Chief Joseph Skaza said the call came in shortly after 3:15 a.m. Tuesday.
``We pulled in this morning to a fully involved building,'' Skaza said. ``We probably had 150 feet of building burning up through the roof. The flames were 30 to 40 feet high.''
By noon, there weren't any flames, but firefighters' work was far from complete. Crews used an excavator to dig through the rubble and ferret out hot spots.
The building had once been a major processing facility for Vermont Marble Co., cutting up marble from area quarries and loading it on to train cars.
Albert Gawet said that although his company doesn't operate quarries in that area any longer, the building was still in use.
``We ran a little marble shop in there, did cutting of marble and rough stone,'' he said. ``We used it for storage of trucks, backhoes, air compressor-type stuff.''
Gawet said he rented a portion of the building to Poultney Pallets, and the two companies had a total of nine employees at the building on a typical day. He said none of the employees was working at the time of the fire.
About 60 firefighters from seven departments were at the building that stretched hundreds of feet back along the quarries and overgrown railroad tracks.
Much of the building was reduced to a gigantic mass of smoldering ash and twisted metal.
``A fire this size, you have a lot of structural collapse,'' Skaza said. ``The roof is caving in. The steel is twisting and bending. It's the biggest fire in a long time, as far as the amount of building involved and the amount of fire involved. It got a real jump and a head start on us.''
Gawet said his building could not be salvaged.
``It's completely totaled,'' he said. ``It's gone. The building is completely down. It was possibly 50 feet at its highest point. The highest point now is probably 10 feet. It's completely flat.''
Including equipment lost, Gawet said total damages are likely to come to $500,000.
``We lost several trucks, trailers, backhoes, several forklifts,'' he said. ``I haven't really punched it all up yet, but it's going to be around half a million dollars.''
Gawet said the building was insured, and he was waiting to hear from his insurance company, which in turn is waiting for the results of the police investigation of the fire.
Vermont State Police investigators said they had no information on what caused the fire.
``I hope there's a clue in there somewhere,'' said Detective Kraig LaPorte. ``Scene examination is really in its preliminary stages.''
