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Much of the investigation depends on the owner of the building, he said. Work needs to be done to ensure the remaining structural components are viable for reconstruction. If the owner chooses to shore up what remains in order to complete an assessment, fire investigators could likely go alongside.

If not, the cause may not ever be determined, since investigators would probably have no safe access to the interior to look at burn patterns, deterioration and other factors.

Crews responding to the fire immediately recognized the dangers of the situation, Rodger said. The first officer at the scene saw smoke coming from the fifth floor, and flames were quickly spotted on the third and fourth floors. Rodger said the first crews were able to enter the front door and look up a stairwell, where they saw burning embers coming down.

Having that fire above them inside the unfinished building was “quite tenuous for our staff. We backed right out,” Rodger said. “It just didn’t bode well to send staff into those stairwells.”

Instead, crews set up aerial ladders and conducted what Rodger described as “defensive exterior attacks,” which meant crews were “pushing water in from the outside, trying to reach the flames with our water streams.”

More than 20 different apparatus rotated through the site during the day, Rodger said.

Propane tanks — which were being used inside the structure to heat the building — could be heard exploding during the fire, shaking the area around the construction site. The site of the planned Sandman Hotel, which has been under construction for months, is only a few hundred yards from Prairieland Park.

Rodger said the construction stage of buildings is probably the most critical time when it comes to potential exposure to fire, since protection measures such as sprinkler systems, alarms and fire separation are often non-existent.

Estimating the monetary value of the damages would be difficult and “premature at this point” because the hotel was still under construction, he said.