Fire safety is still searching for the cause of the fire that destroyed the Pukepine Sawmill's boiler room on Sunday morning.

The early morning fire is the latest in a series of blazes at the mill over the years, on a large site which presents a number of difficulties for firefighters, says Te Puke Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer Glenn Williams.

'As with most of the decent fires we get at that place, our biggest challenge is water.

'When we got there yesterday it was the thing that took a while to get established because it's such a big site and that boiler room was a long way to get to the hydrants out on the road.

'The aerial appliance I called for from that Mount, that did turn up - that requires so much water that it's got to be able to plug directly straight into a decent reticulation supply. Because even running one of our feeders out from the road to that, is not going to give it an adequate enough supply if the monitor on the top of that elevated ladder is to do the job,” says Glenn.

'So it's always going to be a challenge for us, unless we get a building on fire close to the road where the water main runs past outside.”

On Sunday morning they ran six or seven lengths of hose to reach from the hydrant on the road to the appliances on site where the firefighters were working.

'And of course when we first get there we have only got Te Puke's first two appliances, and the later arriving appliances when the alarm is made up to a greater alarm. There's only a limited number of people there to start with to be fighting the fire, and also getting a decent water supply established.

'In our case our first two trucks arrived and we were busy getting hoses out to start fighting the fire and set up a ground monitor as well, but the problem was we couldn't keep that supplied with enough water to make it effective.

'So it wasn't till our second wave of Te Puke guys arrived with the van and utility, a few more guys then the likes of Papamoa and Maketu arrived.”

Firefighters were called to the site just after 6am Sunday.

The stop message, signalling the fire was out, was sent at 10.22am.

A fire safety investigator is on site again this morning trying to determine the cause of the fire.

The remains of the sawdust-fired boiler room will are expected to be demolished after the fire safety investigation is completed.

Pukepine owners were in a meeting today and were not able to be immediately contacted.