The cause of a $5 million hog barn fire at the Bentley Hutterite Colony will remain a mystery.
Bentley Fire Chief Todd Gustafson said fire investigators failed to pinpoint a cause after scouring the wreckage last week.
“It went up to the fire commissioner’s office as an unknown,” Gustafson said on Monday.
“The electrical engineer came in and there was no fault there. Everything seemed to check out.
“There were no indicators of any way pointing us towards arson or anything like that.”
Gustafson said the damage was so severe that no clear conclusion could be drawn from the evidence.
Around 4,500 pigs died in the fire at one of two large hog barns on the Hutterite farm just a few kilometres south of Bentley. No one was injured in the blaze, which took firefighters about five hours to bring under control.
Firefighters from Bentley, Eckville, Sylvan Lake, Blackfalds and Lacombe managed to save the nearby barn and thousands of pigs inside.
Cleanup and is now underway at the site.
A representative for the colony could not be reached for comment on Monday.