WNEG-TV

ATHENS - ATF officials scoured the inside of what's left of the Georgia Theatre Wednesday, with hopes that their efforts, in conjunction with the Athens-Clarke County police department, will help give them some indication of what started the fire that gutted the building last week.

"We are finishing up on the scene work, but our job has just begun," says Dondi Albritton of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "We have to go back to the fire department and get with the agents and local investigators that were doing the interviewing. We will discuss the on the scene work and then after that we have a lot of paper work to do."

Officials have been excavating certain areas of the building that they think may be places of interest to help determine what started the blaze. But even after the National Response Team completes their onsite work and vacate the building, Albritton explains that the investigation will still be ongoing with all agencies that have been involved in the case.

Investigators here say that they hope that they can find a cause of the fire once all of their work is done. But they explained to WNEG's Laura-Ashley Harris that even when everything is finished, there is a possibility that they still may not know what happened. "Its a joint effort. We'll discuss everything and then thats where we will come up with some conclusions, if we can. Sometimes, out of all the investigative work that we do jointly, sometimes you can't even come up with a cause, so at this point... we dont know."

Albritton added that from the structural damage inside the building that was to house AthFest later this week, he isn't sure if the building is salvageable.