An abandoned East Wareham building was leveled after a fast-moving fire ripped through it around 9:15 p.m. on Monday, causing an estimated $40,800 in damage.

"The whole house just fell over," said Wareham resident Mikel Kelle, who had picked up food at the McDonald's on Cranberry Highway at approximately 8:50 p.m. before heading to Stop & Shop to get gas for his vehicle.

"It wasn't on fire when I drove by because I would have noticed," Kelle noted.

When he parked his vehicle and looked across the street at the commercial building, located at 3016 Cranberry Highway next to Midas, Kelle said he immediately saw flames.

The fire was "very high," he said. "This was pretty fast."

The building is located in the Wareham Fire District, which was holding its annual district meeting at Wareham High School when the call came in.

"We were still at the district meeting," said Wareham Fire Chief Robert McDuffy, noting that Onset Fire was providing Main Street station coverage at the time of the blaze and responded to the scene.

Onset Fire Deputy Jeffrey Osswald, who was off-duty at the time, was the first firefighter on-scene.

The first report McDuffy got from Osswald was that the one-story building was "75% involved" when Osswald arrived, meaning it was "all flame and no smoke," explained McDuffy, who was wearing his dress uniform at the scene, having arrived there from the district meeting.

As firefighters worked to knock down the blaze in the building, they also had to worry about brush fires in the surrounding area, exposure to a vehicle parked in the Midas parking lot, and exposure to the Midas building itself.

"We went into defense mode immediately," McDuffy said.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. Because the building was abandoned and marked with a big, red "x" to alert firefighters that it was uninhabited, firefighters only had to worry about containing the blaze.

"I made certain that no one tried to go in there," McDuffy said.

The blaze was deemed extinguished at approximately 12:20 a.m. The cause of the fire remains under investigation by the Wareham Fire Department and Wareham Police.