Firefighters spent more than four hours fighting a blaze which broke out in the once iconic Premier Milling building in the Port Elizabeth city centre yesterday.
Smoke and flames were seen billowing out of the now derelict building, at around 11am.
While firefighters and security personnel at the scene speculated the fire might have been caused by vagrants, no one was in the building at the time.
Having attracted vagrants and people who strip materials from buildings for years, entrances and gaps in the infrastructure had been bricked up, making access into the building difficult for firefighters.
The emergency workers there deployed “Skylift” equipment to hoist a firefighter above the massive three-storey building to access the fire, while at ground level, firefighters broke through some of the building’s remaining windows to douse the inside of the structure.
Speaking at the scene, Daniel Fourie, of Premier Protection Services, which secures the building, said: “We have regularly chased vagrants off the property.