KEARNEY, MO. ? Dozens of investigators began searching Wednesday for the cause of two suspicious fires that resulted in about $2 million worth of damage at family-owned lumber yards in northwest Missouri.

No injuries were reported in the blazes reported Monday night and early Tuesday at lumber yards in Kearney and Mosby, both located in Clay County. The official cause of the fires has not been determined.

But Mack Porter, who started the business 52 years ago, said he thought the fires were the work of an arsonist.

“This is a punk, low-life way for settling differences,” Porter said. “But this is a monetary loss, we will land on our feet.”

On Wednesday, members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ National Response Team conducted low aerial flyovers of the businesses and shot pictures from a ladder truck, said Larry Scott, Kansas City spokesman for the agency.

About 40 members of the National Response team, in addition to members of several other state and local agencies, are expected to assist in the investigation.

The first fire was reported at 10:33 p.m. Monday at Porter’s Building Center in Kearney. The warehouse contained sheet rock, plywood, forklifts, paint and other building materials. Propane tanks on the back of forklifts soon began exploding, said Kearney Fire Chief Larry Pratt.

Flames reaching 75 feet in the air ripped through the warehouse, Pratt said.

The second fire at Porter’s lumberyard on U.S. Highway 69 in Mosby was reported just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, said Fire Chief Larry Kipping of the Fishing River Fire Protection District in Mosby.

Fire rages out of control at the Mosby, Mo., Distribution Center of Porter's Lumber Co., based in Kearney, Mo. This marked the second fire at a Porter's facility Tuesday morning. The first came at the Kearney, Mo., location just hours before this blaze.

The entire structure, which is about the size of a football field, contained lumber and other material.

“It (the fire) kept feeding on itself and getting bigger and bigger,” he said.

Kent Scheible, a banker and president of the Kearney Chamber of Commerce, said the fires and the fact that arson is suspected stunned the area’s business community.

“Nobody can figure out why this would happen,” he said. “In Kearney, we’re pretty much a small town, even though we’re growing like crazy. It set us back a little bit.”

Porter’s Building Center reopened Tuesday. A number of customers, expressing their condolences, paraded in and out the hardware store throughout the day.

Work crews filled building orders with material at other company locations in the metropolitan area, Porter’s son, Craig, said.

“There’s a silver lining in this,” he said. “I just haven’t found it yet.”