It was a Friday nearly one year ago that dark clouds of smoke could be seen billowing in the skies over Eau Claire.

That smoke was coming from Waste Research and Reclamation, a chemical plant that burned down last year.

Friday, the company hosted an open house to celebrate the progress they've made.

The company is a lot different than it was a year ago.

WRR rebuilt two of its plant buildings and 15 waste tanks.

However, employees say it wouldn't have been possible without each other's help.

Employees say the fire that consumed the south portion of WRR's plant brought them closer together.

"The fire was definitely devastating to the company. It was a very emotional time. Everybody came together and pulled together as a family. We all worked really hard and worked together to ensure we all still had a job and still had a place to work,” says Employee Angie Olson.

The Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Chuck Terry says the fire started Friday morning, June 22nd last year, in a chiller room in one of the buildings, and it spread from there.

Roads in the area were shut down, and people working at other businesses in the area were evacuated.

And, even though the fire closed down the plant, Terry says WRR was back in operation by Monday morning. "It's just a group of people working together to ensure that, not only do we survive, but we're better than we were before.”

And, he says thankfully, no one was hurt in the fire or the clean-up.

Terry says WRR started back in the 70s, so the three-decade-old buildings weren't up to today's fire code.

"The building was 1970 vintage and it was made out of wood at that point in time and fire suppression was not required by codes,” he explains.

But, Terry says the new buildings have a state-of-the-art fire extinguishing system, with 360,000 gallons of water on hold, just in case.

Terry says there's still a small portion of the plant that needs to be rebuilt.

He says to this day, he's not sure on an exact dollar figure for all the damage the fire caused.