Firefighters from Trafford, Warrior, Cane Creek and other communities battled a blaze that destroyed the Trafford post office around midnight Saturday.

“Residents there can be assured they will be receiving the same service from the postal service as before,” said Yulanda Burns, a postal inspector and public information officer at the Atlanta postal inspector office. Agents from the Atlanta office inspected the Trafford post office.

Trafford Mayor Robert Niblett said the post office asked the city for help, and he let them set up a temporary operation at the community center in Trafford Town Hall.

“They like it where they are now,” said Niblett. “They’ve actually got a little more room.”

The postal service will be sending a specially-made trailer that will serve as a temporary post office. The trailer will be parked in the burned post office’s parking lot, and will be hooked up to water and power sources and be fully functional. It should arrive within the week.

The postal service isn’t sure whether it will rebuild the post office or not.

“At this time, those decisions haven’t been made,” said Burns. “It’s so recent… What’s more important is that we have resumed operations.”

Niblett said the building was completely destroyed, but the mail inside actually remained mostly safe.

“It got wet, and some of it got smoke on it and turned black. But they don’t think they missed a piece,” he said.

Niblett said the Trafford fire department had one of the fastest response times he’s ever seen.

“I worked for Birmingham [fire department] for 32 years, so I know that’s a good run,” he said. Niblett said he doesn’t suspect arson.

Trafford fire chief Allen Camp said the fire is currently under investigation by state fire marshals.

“When our guys got on the scene, the fire was already coming out of the roof,” he said. Camp said the building is mostly made of concrete and brick, and that may have been what saved the mail inside.

Acting Trafford postmaster Wil Srofe said the postal workers can do everything out of the community center aside from running a debit or credit card.

“It’s going a lot better than we expected it to,” he said. The workers can still weigh and scan items, and Srofe goes to the Palmerdale Post Office at the end of the day to download information onto their computers.

The computer equipment at the Trafford Post Office was mostly destroyed, but the workers were able to recover the computers central processing units, and will be able to install them in new computers as early as today.

There was no damage to any surrounding buildings.