Update: Officials confident in the cause of scrapyard fire at Miller Compressing, not their first time on the site



MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Milwaukee Firefighter spent six hours battling a blaze at Miller Compressing on Saturday. Officials believe they know the cause of the fire, and it wasn't the first time they've been called to the scrap yard.

Because it's a scrapyard, they're constantly working with small fires, and Miller Compressing uses its own lines to put them out. But as we saw yesterday, sometimes things combust -- and the fire gets too big to handle on their own.

"It looks pretty bad whatever it is," says  Cheyenne Ensor.

A pile of junk cars catches fire at Miller Compressing Saturday. As firefighters attack the blaze from cherry pickers, smoke billows into the air, and catches the attention of drivers on the interstate.

"My family were actually in our car driving down 43 and we saw all the black smoke," says Ensor.

While Ensor comes in for a closer look, some neighbors don't even step outside of their houses.

"It`s pretty common, fires don`t bother me," says Gilberto Flores.

Flores has been through this before. Two years ago, the firefighters responded to a two alarm fire at Miller Compressing. People could see the smoke for miles, including the thousands of baseball fans leaving Miller Park on opening day.

Flores moved here more than three decades ago, and says ever since, he's heard explosions coming from the scrapyard.

"Just two days ago there was very loud very loud that the whole house shook," says Flores.

Battalion Chief Deb Weber says firefighters were working the blaze from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. It was a challenging attack, with three water towers running, and three engines at each tower -- but they've done it before.

"It`s a big pile of scrap metal, it`s 15,000 tons of metal, it`s very dense, very compressed. At the time we had some very good weather conditions yesterday with the humidity, there`s spot fires in it all the time and sometimes it just flares up from spontaneous combustion," says Weber. "Everybody pretty much knows that to do when we get there."

And given the constant burning and shredding on the site, it may not be the last time firefighters are called to Miller Compressing.

"That`s their field of work and they do a great job with what they do and we know that once in a while we`ll be there," says Weber.

The fire department says Saturday's fire was not as big as the last big Miller Compressing fire in 2012. The smoke people saw yesterday was mostly the result of all the water being poured onto the blaze. No one was injured during the fire.