'Better than 50/50' chance northern Ont. plywood facility struck by fire will reopen, president says

Despite suffering extensive fire damage, the president of the Rockshield Engineered Plywood Plant in Cochrane says there’s a good chance the plant will recover.

Tom Scott said in an interview Monday there was extensive damage to the facility in Friday’s blaze, which was made worse because the fan powering the ventilation system helped pull the flames into other parts of the operation.

Despite suffering extensive fire damage, Tom Scott, president of the Rockshield Engineered Plywood Plant in Cochrane says there’s a good chance the plant will recover. (Photo from video)

“It's pretty extensive,” Scott said of the damage.

“(There are) compromised areas that need to be looked at by a structural engineer.”

While there’s no formal damage estimate yet, he said it’s going to take time to recover and get the 175 people who worked there back on the job.

“We had insurance (and) you know insurance will let you recover from a fairly significant problem,” Scott said.

“This is a fairly significant event (and) if it had burned the entire facility down to the ground, the insurance would not even remotely covered what it would have taken to rebuild it.”

He said the company will work with local government and the province to see if there is funding available to help them rebuild.

“We're going to figure out what if there's any funds available there -- along with our insurance -- and we're going to work together and see what we can do,” Scott said.

Fire at Rockshield Engineered Plywood Plant in Cochrane, Ont., August 9, 2024

“But I mean right now I'd say there's, you know, a better than 50/50 chance that will reopen the mill. But it's going to take some time.”

One of the priorities now, he said, is working with their competitors to ensure that Rockshield’s customers are still served while the company tries to recover.

“(We’ve) been well received by some of our competitors and people we do business with, and they're willing to help us, you know,” he said.

“The outpouring (of support) has been great industry-wide… We all do really care about each other, if we're suppliers or competitors or whatever. When the chips are down, everybody's kind of rallied around and it's been that's been pretty heartwarming, to tell you the truth.”

He made special mention of volunteer firefighters and Expedition Helicopters, which dropped massive buckets of water to help extinguish the blaze.

Helicopter help was key

“If Expedition had not been there, we might have lost the entire building,” Scott said.

They will spend the next few days assessing the damage and looking for ways to help their employees, he added. They will be communicating with them in the coming days to give them the latest information.

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“We’ll be putting out a letter to each one of them telling them what the process looks like,” Scott said.

“But right now we have a few unknowns that makes it a little hard to do that ... So that's really where we're at that -- that's our main focus right now. How does it affect our employees and what's the time frame?”

Despite the uncertainty and challenges, Scott added that he was blown away by the way people came out to help – firefighters, employees, other businesses.

“You always wonder how people will act or behave in a crisis situation like a big fire,” he said.

“I’ve got to say, our employees, as you know, the fire department, Expedition, you know Cochrane as a whole just over overachieved.”