Cudahy - The firewall had to hold.

It was Monday morning, before dawn, at the Patrick Cudahy Inc. plant. Fire raged. Flames ran perilously close to a northern wall that bounded the oldest buildings on the site. If the wall was breached, the fire would run straight into the engine room, which housed ammonia compressors.

Cudahy Fire Chief Dan Mayer called together a team of firefighters and hazardous material experts to go over the options to contain the blaze.

They weren't just in a fight to save a plant -- they were in a struggle to avoid a local economic calamity, the loss of hundreds of jobs.

"It was never an option to lose it," Mayer said.

They didn't.

A fire that began late July 5 was declared extinguished on Wednesday, though crews responded to a flare-up Saturday. It was the kind of event that could change a city, its sense of itself and its future.

Cudahy, the old blue-collar city, worked. No one was killed or injured. The plant was saved.

Firefighters from 30 different departments from across the state used more than 33 million gallons of water to douse the flames.

Despite extensive damage at the plant, the firm, a division of Smithfield Foods, said production would restart at the site as soon as possible. Administrative staff is already back at work, along with 100 hourly workers in shipping and receiving.

"As we try and get this thing back up, the plant is staying," said William G. Otis, president and chief operating officer of Patrick Cudahy Inc., on Friday. "I can't wait to reopen our plant . . . get back to making and selling good product."

From the ground, you can hardly tell what sort of damage occurred. From the air, though, the scope of the disaster can be seen -- piles of scorched debris littering several buildings.

"It was not total devastation for this company," Otis said. "We lost some 270,000 square feet of storage and production space."

But around 750,000 square feet did not suffer damage, including production areas for dry sausage, precooked sausage and sweet apple- wood smoked bacon, Otis said.

Four of 10 lines for microwave bacon were undamaged, Otis said.

Around here, sausage and bacon are the stuff of life and commerce.

The city had to preserve the plant and care for the people.

Meticulous disaster plans that had been rehearsed over the years were put in place, a mobile command was established, an evacuation center created, police, fire and emergency crews working hand in hand with the school district and disaster-relief agencies.

"The emergency response worked from start to finish," said Cudahy's Police Chief Thomas Poellot.