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Search dogs scour site of weekend warehouse blaze

Posted at 4:02 PM, Nov 09, 2015
and last updated 2015-11-10 00:44:19-05

MURRAY, Utah --  Monday morning, Murray City Fire was back on site of a half-demolished warehouse- but this time, with a team of search and rescue dogs.

Murray City Deputy Fire Marshal Pat Killion could not confirm what the dogs were sniffing for.

The dogs walked the wreckage alongside members of Search and Rescue from Utah Task Force 1.

On its website, the task force states it specializes in rescuing victims of structural collapse.

Deputy Fire Marshal Killion said in an interview over the weekend that "squatters or homeless seem to get into these places quite often."

He also said, "I just hope there was nobody inside when this started because obviously that's not going to be a good thing."

On Monday morning, and a team scoured the rubble. While the search dogs could have been sniffing out any possible human remains, search dogs can also be trained to single out accelerants.

In that case, it could help pinpoint the cause of the blaze.

The debris still smoked while the dogs and Search and Rescue poured over it. Murray City Fire said the building will continue to actively burn until demolition is complete.

Hours later, a group gathered at the building to talk about just that.

Killion joined the group, along with others from Murray City Fire, city officials, UTA TRAX representatives and the building owner, among others.

We were told the several people met to figure out how to move forward. Half the building still stands, with the rest set to be demolished.

Remi Barron, who was not at the meeting, said they don't plan for the rest of the tear-down to upset the adjacent TRAX lines.

"We think that, that will be done in off surface hours," he said, referencing he demolition.

But, "if there are some operations that need to take place during service hours, we're going to update people as soon as we can," Barron said.

They've called in a special crane to take down the rest of the structure. Killion said it should arrive Tuesday.

Once demolition is complete, Murray City Fire said they should be able to stop the smoldering.