portage, wis. an assembly line of dump trucks continuously hauls blocks and barrels of cheese from the associated milk producers inc. buildingwhen you haul our materials of a plant this size, you&39ve got a lot of trucks, a lot of trailers, and a lot of commotion, weideman said.that commotion was nothing compared to the damage done by friday night&rsquos fire httpwww.channel3000.comnewsfirebreaksoutatportagecheesepackagingplant30219394. no one was hurt in the fire.while the fire was contained to the first floor dry storage and ingredient warehouse and no cheese products were kept in that area, weideman said hundreds of thousands of pounds of cheese along with most of the factory&rsquos packing materials were destroyed.you walk through and you see cheese all over. smoke, soot, everything covering everything, weideman said. and that&39s a little disheartening.the cause of the fire is still under investigation, weideman said. he added there is no official estimate, but he predicts the smoke caused millions of dollars in damage.you simply say, okay. put on your positive face, and let&39s move forward, weideman said.part of that moving forward is getting people back to workalong with hiring on contractors to help evaluate and repair the damage, weideman said more than 225 of his 350 employees are back on the job helping to clean up the mess.sometimes you sit back and say, does it take a tragedy to pull everybody together you could say yes, but my people are very good, and they do a very good job daytoday on their production, weideman said. very proud of what they do. they&39re very good workers, and they pull together even that much more.weideman said the state will have to inspect the plant before it can produce anything again. he said none of the equipment was destroyed, but it still needs to be cleaned and tested.weideman said despite the steps his crew needs to take to get the plant back to what it was, they&rsquore on track to be back to normal and open to full functionality by december 26th. 
