When Samuel King rose from his lunch table early Saturday afternoon, he was shocked to see his wood shop engulfed in flames.

A woman who lives across the road and another woman who had stopped to buy tomatoes from her quickly called in the fire at 1695 Robert Fulton Highway, Little Britain Township.

The alarm went out at 1:09 p.m.

King was able to free two horses stabled beneath the shop.

Firefighters from eight companies responded and soaked the sprawling, two-story frame building with water pumped from a farm pond down the road.

They controlled the blaze in about an hour, Quarryville Fire Company Deputy Chief Tim Ryan said. But they had no chance of saving the shop.

"It was pretty much fully involved when I got here," Ryan said. "A total loss."

Ryan estimated the value of the building and contents to be "at least $100,000.

"This wasn't set," Ryan added, but "I'm not sure what started it yet."

King said he had been burning trash between the shop and a nearby patch of woods that morning. "I thought it was out," he added.

Ruined along with the shop were wood-working machines and lumber. Heat from the flames buckled the vinyl siding on King's house and a nearby barn.

King said he used to manufacture picnic tables and other wooden furniture at the shop but more recently made wooden lathes for hanging tobacco.

The shop, which King said was built in 1990, was attached to a pole barn that was also destroyed.

Blackened poles poked up from the rubble at midafternoon, their tips smoking. Firefighters –– many of them Amish –– prodded the wreckage with long pokers and sprayed water on hot spots, sending up clouds of steam and smoke.

The fire spared the masonry horse stable, along with adjacent diesel and air tanks.

King got down on his hands and knees and mucked some debris out of a gully so runoff water could run freely beside his gravel lane.

A neighbor said King works for a window-making company in Bird-in-Hand and operated the shop only on evenings and weekends.

Word of the fire spread quickly, and a large Amish contingent gathered in a horse pasture beside the shop. Smoke could be seen two miles away, according to one teenager.

King's neighbor from across the road, who identified himself only as "Beiler," said the community would help King rebuild.

Beiler said he was returning to his house after getting the mail when his children called to him that the shop was on fire. "All I could see was fire and smoke. I heard it popping. ... I thought this thing was going to burn to the ground."

Responding to the scene were firefighters from Quarryville, Rawlinsville, Robert Fulton, Refton, Oxford, Port Deposit, Md., Rising Sun, Md., and Bart Township.