The fire at World Resource Recovery Systems was big, hot and according to fire officials, it had a good head start when a passerby first spotted it at 1:00 a.m.

At the height of the fire at 631 East Avenue, flames were shooting into the night sky.  The fire was raging in sprawling storage buildings filled with recycled materials the company pulls in from thousands of customers in a 100 mile radius.

They say there were plastics, bundles of cardboard, and bales of compacted aluminum cans. Chief of the Erie Fire Department Guy Santone said the size of the fire reminded crews of that big mattress warehouse fire on the west side they battled last year. "Initially it was a challenge because we had water problems...but we got all that straightened out and we had the whole platoon here last night fighting this," said Santone, "and we called in an entire other platoon, except for one company to man the rest of the city."

Because of all the hot metal, including the steel roof of the storage structure that caved-in during the firefight, the attack had to be done from the outside. Until lunch time, they were still saturating smoldering hot spots from the outside using a ladder truck.

Heavy equipment was used to spread out some of the smoldering recyclables, so that firefighters could we down what was still burning underneath.

Company president Frank Lasky told us he learned of the fire when his drivers arrived for work at 4:00 a.m.  "It was quite a thing to wake up to but as you can see we've already begun the clean up and we should be up and running shortly," Lasky said.

Lasky has seen fires at the recycling business before, including a serious one in 1983. He says it is a risk when you are storing combustible materials, but he also said he has no idea what started this one. "I don't have a clue, we're going to be looking into that and time will tell, hopefully we'll figure out what happened."

City fire inspectors are trying to figure out what caused the fire as well.  They were on scene Wednesday morning, but because the burned materials were still hot, they were unable to get inside and take a closer look.  Representatives from the Clean Water Program of the state Department of Environmental Protection were on site as well, waiting to take a closer look.  They will determine if any other departments of environmental concern will need to join the investigation as well.

No one was at work when the fire broke out.  No firefighters were injured in battling the flames.