URBANA, Ill. — A building at a recycling center in Urbana was reduced to ruins on Tuesday when it caught fire.

The fire happened on the 2800 block of North Lincoln Avenue, at Mack’s Twin City Recycling Center.

The co-owner, Corey Mathis, said he was at his son’s baseball game around 8 p.m. when his brother called to let him know one of their buildings was on fire.

“I obviously didn’t know how big it was until I got here,” said Mathis.

When he arrived, he saw plumes of smoke rising into the air and firefighters trying to put out the flames. Six firefighting agencies responded to the blaze.

It’s not the first time Mack’s Twin City Recycling has been on fire.

“It’s frustrating just because we’ve had this situation before and we know how much work is involved in the whole fire and getting everything rebuilt,” Mathis said.

He said that six or seven years ago, the same exact building was destroyed by fire, and they were putting it back together when Tuesday’s fire broke out.

“We just had got it up maybe a month ago. There’s a couple things in there that aren’t even finished,” said Mathis. “I know there’s some more wiring to do. Not a lot of equipment in there, not a lot of things in there, so we’re not sure yet what happened.”

“It’s pretty rare that we’re going to the same location for multiple fires,” said Chief Brian Smith of the Eastern Prairie Fire Protection District. “I think this is the third time we’ve been to this facility.”

Smith said it was a very hard fire to put out.

“Because we had to maintain space, a safe distance because there was some propane tanks in there and it was igniting,” said Smith.

He said one of the propane tanks exploded, so they needed to use an aerial apparatus from the Savoy Fire Department to reach areas of the fire.

“So yeah, large fire, very difficult to put out,” said Smith.

Mathis said their family is upset, but they’ve been through this before and will get through it together.

“We’ll take a look at it and we’ll kind of come up with a plan,” Mathis said. “We think we’ll probably get the building back up and going, it might set us back a year from where we want to be.”

The cause of the fire is under investigation.