PENDLETON, Ore. — Pacific Northwest wheat farmers are making plans to cope with the fallout from a massive early-morning fire Aug. 10 that left the Grain Craft flour mill in Pendleton a “total loss.”

As of 2 p.m. Aug. 15 the mill was still smoldering due to the amount of grain and finished flour in the building, Pendleton Police Chief Chuck Byram told the Capital Press.

Representatives of Grain Craft, insurance adjustors and state fire marshal investigators were on site to develop a plan to secure the building and put out the fire, Byram said.

“They’re just in the initial stages of trying to implement a plan to figure out what we’re going to do with the rest of that building,” he said.

The company is working with farmers to handle the excess supply, said Natalie Faulkner, director of communications for Grain Craft, based in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The building was more than 100 years old, Faulkner said. Twenty-two employees worked in the mill. There were no injuries in the fire.

Byram said the mill was a “total loss.” The fire is “one of the most significant” in his more than 20 years in law enforcement and in Pendleton.

“It’s one of those things where people are going to have to adjust,” he said. “Hopefully, Grain Craft is able to get back in business here in Pendleton. Not only are they an employer, but a lot of farmers depend on them for their services.”

The company does not disclose the production capacity of the building, Faulkner said. The extent of the damage and possibility of rebuilding are not yet known, she added.

“It’s still an active situation, we are still evaluating everything, just trying to understand the cause and circumstances,” Faulkner told the Capital Press.

Ben Maney, president of Oregon Wheat Growers League, farms north of Pendleton.

He doesn’t take his grain to the facility, but “a substantial amount of farmers” in the area do, he told the Capital Press.

“It’s been a staple for the Pendleton community for an awfully long time, generations, and it’s always been a central location (in) town,” he said.

The fire is the latest hit for growers, after experiencing severe drought last year, Maney said. Many crops had rebounded this year with spring rains.

“A lot of farmers don’t have home storage, and they can’t store that grain on their farm,” he said. “For this heartbreaking event to happen today, it puts the community and a lot of the farmers in a tough situation. It hits the community hard.”

Jeremy Bunch, CEO of Shepherd’s Grain, a farmer-owned flour company, sent an email to customers about the fire.

“We are working on a contingency plan now and getting wheat staged for movement to another Grain Craft mill,” Bunch said. “Unfortunately, there will be an interruption in flour supply as we work through these details. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes. We are working hard to minimize this flour supply interruption and will provide a timeline update very soon.”

The cause of the fire was “mechanical failure,” Byram, the police chief, told the Capital Press.

On Aug. 9, dispatchers received a report of black smoke coming from the mill, “with no visible flames,” according to a police department press release. The fire department responded, extinguished the small fire and remained on fire watch.

The fire subsequently reignited at about 4 a.m. Aug. 10 and the mill became fully engulfed due to the dry grain and the wooden structure, Byram said.

Employees identified the source of the fire, Byram said.

“It happened in the mill itself, with one of the pieces of equipment, with a rubber bushing or housing that obviously got too hot and started the fire,” he said.

There were no injuries, he said.

It’s the middle of harvest, Byram said, so the mill was processing a lot of flour. He didn’t have an exact figure, but said Grain Craft employees estimated there were “hundreds of thousands of pounds of processed flour in the bins.”

Some surrounding buildings have been damaged by water and smoke, Byram said.

The Pendleton Fire Department, Umatilla Tribal Fire Department, Umatilla County Fire District No. 1 and other agencies responded to the scene, at 501 S.E. Emigrant Ave.

Pendleton Assistant Fire Chief Tony Pierotti told the East Oregonian newspaper the silos were full of finished grain, so the fuel load was “extreme.”