Hourly workers at General Electric’s Appliance Park manufacturing center in Louisville are set to return to work this week after a massive fire in one of its buildings shut down production.
The April 3rd blaze destroyed a warehouse at the plant and prompted a shelter-in-place order for more than 17,000 homes and businesses. The six-alarm blaze, Jefferson County's largest structure fire, smoldered for days.
The company had limited production last week and requested all salaried employees return to work. This week, all hourly workers will start to return in phases.
Investigator Maj. Henry Ott, of the Louisville Fire Department, says it could take two months to complete the investigation into what caused the fire. The blaze destroyed the warehouse section of the park's Building 6, which is larger than five acres. It is a non-production building.
At one point, some 200 firefighters battled the fire.
Ott says that there's no known cause of the fire and that no theories have been eliminated.
