St. Jacobs Market destroyed by fire

(Update)

A Southern Ontario landmark is in ruins after an early morning fire.

Waterloo fire crews responded to an alarm at the St. Jacobs Market just before 2, and arrived to find the main building engulfed in flames.

Crews from at least 2 other stations were called in to help, and fire fighters are still putting out spot fires in the wreckage. The Fire Marshal has been called in to investigate, but at this point there are no injuries reported.

Lisa Hepfner reports.

The big building that has been surrounded by a fence from the Fire Marshal Office has completely burned to the ground. Officials still don’t know how, why or even where the fire started. They say they’re getting closer. So far, there’s nothing suspicious, nothing to say it was foul play.

Some of the things they’re looking at; it was made of wood, it was very open and it was too stories high, and the insides of the building were very combustible. There are a lot of food vendors, a lot of them had hoods that vented to the outside and used a lot of grease. So those are some of the things that firefighters are looking for.

The entire area was filled with people all day long; jammed with cars, all filled with people coming to have a look at the home that the landmark left behind.

Some neighbours say the flames reached 100 feet into the air.

Rick Pederson of the Woolwich Fire Department said “Attended the scene in about 5 or 6 minutes and realized it was fully involved. Through the roof at that time.”

The roof came down shortly after. All firefighters could do was try and stop it from spreading to other buildings.

“It’s older construction; heavy timber, which would be required to be sprinklered if it was built to todays code, back then it wasn’t” Pederson continued.

Sheila Shantz from the Market said “we’ve obviously lost the farmers market building, it was a two level building, had about 60 vendors in there. So right now, we are very concerned for our vendors, worried about getting them back and working again.”

Local vendors had this reaction:

“Big loss, big. I mean we’re luckier than most because a lot of the crafts people have inventory and stuff like that where as we bring in the fresh stuff like the farmers bring in their vegetables, so I think we’re luckier in that sense. It’s going to be a big loss for the upper floor.”

“We started in 1988, selling summer sausage. And we’ve been here for those 25 years, and this is a big part of our life.”

And the loss is almost as big for the customers who had this reaction:

“at first I thought it was the barn, where the animals were. When they said it was the main one, I just got in my car and drove down, and when I came around the corner I just… (look of disbelief).”

“this is where we used to meet every Saturday for our coffee and chit-chat with people who we’ve become really good friends with over the years because of the community.”

Some of them didn’t have any insurance for some of the stalls. Some were craftspeople who had all of their hard work and crafts in there and they’re all gone now. There’s already Facebook pages set up to help to help some of those vendors. There’s also Facebook pages to tell you where you can buy sdome of those things that everyone went for; the apple fritters, the cinnamon twists. There’s other places you can buy some of those things, some of the vendors have other locations.

Otherwise, they’re hoping that thre will be a farmers market in this parking lot this Thursday, not even a full week after the fire, where people can get all the things that they love at St. Jacobs.

Officials held a press conference this afternoon. It can be viewed below.