Fire crews were called to a shop in rural northern Abbotsford, where they found the structure fully engulfed in flames early Friday morning.
“The building was fully involved from front to back,” assistant fire chief Craig Bird with the Abbotsford Fire Rescue Service said of the roughly 120-by-60-foot building in the 27000 block of Townshipline Road.
“It’s definitely below-zero conditions right now, and cold temperatures, which makes firefighting with water a little more difficult. Crews are doing a great job.”
RELATED: Two major fires in Pitt Meadows
The shop had automobiles and storage inside, Bird said, adding that the building was empty and no one appears to have been injured.
“There was a passerby who noticed the fire. The homeowner was unaware,” he said.
However, Bird said there was “collapse potential” with the building, and so fire crews were kept at a distance to ensure their safety.
It wasn’t the only major fire in the area Friday morning. As many as two dozen cattle were killed in one of two large fires in Pitt Meadows early in the day.
That fire involved two barns at a property on Old Dewdney Trunk Road, while the second fire sparked at an a former nursery off Ford Road.
It isn’t clear if the two fires were related.
–with files from Mike Hall, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News