Sirens blared as fire trucks rushed to a fire just north of 20^th St. NE on Machias Road last Saturday night.

A pile of debris owned by a company that recycles materials such as concrete, wood and agricultural products caught on fire bringing with it billows of smoke and flames which firefighters from Lake Stevens Fire District worked to bring under control.

The 75 foot by 75 foot pile was 40 feet high and contained a combination of products used to recycle into paper.

“It was a combination of products from when they tear down a house, and agricultural products,” Lake Stevens Fire District’s Fire Marshal Robert Marshall said. “They grind it in a stump grinder and haul it to Kimberly-Clark in Everett where it becomes paper.

They had been stockpiling some of the wood debris because there was a slow down at Kimberly-Clark.”

The fire was burning within the pile and backhoes had to be used to pull the pile apart and get inside of it.

“It took a lot of dismantling, they had to tear it down piece by piece,” Marshall said. “It was a large pile and was burning inside and underneath.”

The 911 call was phoned in by a third party and the cause is still undetermined.

Firefighters from Lake Stevens Fire District, Getchell Fire District, Granite Falls Fire District and Snohomish Fire District all participated in the call. They continued to work on hot spots until around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.

There were no injuries and no buildings were damaged other than a small storage shed.