A fire the magnitude of last week's Fireside community blaze called for hands to be on deck providing support in the background to make sure resources were available to not only fight the fire but make sure the rest of the town remained serviced.

It took massive water resources to turn the tide on what is likely the largest single, most destructive fire in the town's history. 

"Our fire department was front and centre and did a great job and had Rocky View and the City of Calgary help them," says Suzanne Gaida, Cochrane assistant chief administrative officer, "but behind the scenes during the whole event we had a water operator that was working hard in the plant to make sure they had pressure and to make sure there was no loss of pressure to the rest of Fireside."

"That operator would have been woken up by alarms and went into the plant to make sure that the crew did not run out of water or pressure. The operator also made sure the reservoir was full, cut pressure to other parts of the community, that kind of stuff, to make sure water was not an issue."

After the fire, water operations also made sure the reservoir was refilled and brought operations back to normal.

Municipal enforcement officers and RCMP responded to control traffic control during and after the fire to keep people safe and make sure fire services had the room to battle the blaze.

An incident command headquarters was established at the site and fire inspectors have been on site all week. Town GIS and IT personnel were available to provide data and mapping information on all the homes affected.

When the investigation winds down the roads department will be assessing the damage to roads and sidewalks and the parks department will be repairing any damage to public land.

"There's a lot of other stuff as a result of the heat and the fire, so we'll be cleaning up there for a bit."

Utility companies were also on site to temporarily cut off service to the area impacted.

Gaida says residents continue to pull together in many ways in the aftermath.

"It's all about community and supporting each other."

Investigation should wrap up soon

The investigation into the fire is nearing the end and information may be released early next week.

Fire Prevention Officer Jeff Avery, who is heading up the investigation with co-worker Jay Wieliczko, says it's been a slow and thorough investigation of the site, but he believes it should be wrapped up in a few days.

In the meantime, the damaged homes across the street from the fire as well as the vehicles on the street have now been released to the insurance companies to complete their investigations. Scorch and destroyed vehicles have also started to be removed from the street.