As a few last whiffs of smoke drifted from debris of the old Wiard Plow factory in Batavia late this morning, streams of area residents drove by the Swan Street location to see for themselves the destruction from Saturday's massive fire.
What they saw was more than the rubble of bricks, charred beams and twisted metal. They also saw the remains of Batavia's once thriving industrial history.
Firefighters were on scene as late as 10:30 a.m. as investigators tried picking through the debris to find the factory floor, in hopes of confirming the fire's origin and possible cause.
Lt. James Steinbrenner said they did get to a portion of the floor, but not the area they want to investigate. Steinbrenner said the location investigators would like to examine is under much heavier rubble. He said it will take heavy equipment to remove and it's unclear yet who will pay for that work.
Arson is still suspected, but police detectives have yet to announce any findings.
More pictures after the jump:
The bottom two pictures show the smashed windows of two trucks that may be associated with a business that had been (and might still be) occupying another section of the Wiard Plow complex. Based on the location of the vehicles, it seems highly unlikely that these windows were smashed by falling bricks from the fire. A more likely possibility is that they were smashed previously by vandals.
