Fire shuts down biggest sawmill in N.L.

Late last month, a fire broke out here. It happened at the drying process of the large mill. One employee was injured in the fire, but recovering well. At this point, it's not clear what started the fire. When you're dealing with a large mill and there's a lot of heat, it's happening in the drying process of the mill. So it could have been an ember or something like that. The company creates hundreds of direct and indirect jobs in the forest industry. All of them shut down since the fire. Sawmill operations suspended, all harvesting paused, and Sexton's isn't buying any new logs. Any trucking will rely on previous inventory. And when you take something out of the mix for four to six weeks, we're talking 8 to 12 percent of an annual operation, it affects everybody. Sexton Lumber has an annual production capacity of 65 million board feet. The province's biggest sawmill and the largest supplier of pulp chips to Corner Brook Pulp and Paper. Now, this saw mill supplies wood chips to the Corner Brook pulp and paper mill, but no one with Kruger wanted to talk to CBC. They declined an interview. So it's not clear how production is being affected right now. Nobody wants to see the whole industry or any part of the industry be affected. And so, you know, it's something we're working on collectively. This is not the first fire at Sexton's. There was one near the facility in 2025. In 2014 the whole drying facility burned and another fire years before that. Documents obtained by Access to Information in May shows emails from the forestry department to owner Kevin Sexton issuing steps he needed to take to mitigate fire risk. Things like stop dumping waste material directly in the forest, create a fire break around wood piles, and provide a detailed emergency and fire risk plan to the department. According to Dawson, repairs to the Bloomfield facility should be completed in the next two or three weeks. Colleen Connors, CBC News, Corner Brook.