COLVILLE -- A fire at the Vaagen Brothers Lumber Mill in Colville Wednesday night shut down operations as the company was forced to send almost half of its 100-employee work force home.

The mill produces 130-million board feet of lumber every year but a late-night fire forced machinery to a grinding halt Wednesday night.

“The saw mill and the kilns can't operate,” Vice President Russ Vaagen said. “It was a pretty crazy sight, all the lights were off and all you could see was red flashing lights and water spraying everywhere.”

Stevens County and Colville Fire showed up with 22 firefighters and four trucks to put out the flames that reached 20 feet high. The fire was isolated to the turbine area, which is the power source of the entire mill.

“Right now we're looking at an oil leak and a possible electrical shortage caused by a spark that started the fire, but it's still under investigation,” Colville Fire Chief Jeff Pitts said.

Vaagen Brothers has been able to re-route power to other parts of its facility, but with the sawmill and kilns not running the company says two crews totaling 40 people had to be sent home.

“In the short term there will be certain jobs that still go on,” Vaagen said. “It will probably affect close to 50-percent of our work force and the duration of that is unknown at this time.”

Vaagen says it could have been much worse if it wasn't for the quick response from the fire crews and two employees who tried stopping the fire before crews arrived. The two men were hospitalized but not seriously hurt.

“They did get some smoke inhalation, went to the hospital to get treated for that,” Vaagen said.

The lumber mill is currently waiting on the insurance company to figure out when power can come back on. Vaagen hopes to be producing lumber in the next few weeks, but says replacing the turbine could take up to 18 months.