Investigators think Sunday night's raging fire in Kings Mountain may be the work of an arsonist.

Hot spots were still burning late Monday afternoon. The fire erupted Sunday night at 10 p.m. at a pallet company behind the demolished Glen Raven Mill off of Battleground Road.

The company takes old pallets and remakes them into new ones. Once they are remade, they are sold, and it is that finished product that erupted into a fire so hot it was hard for firefighters to get close to it. Some 15,000 pallets burned.

Twenty four hours later, what remains is a sea of charcoal and smoldering hot spots. For company owner Scott Grigg, it's hard to look at what's left of years of hard work, investment and promise.

Grigg told WCNC that it's not that he didn't think it was possible. It's that the reality of it is tough.

"It's just part of the business and it comes with the territory," he said. "I've tried to think of ways to prevent it, but... you know. Unfortunately, it's put about four people out of work right now."

Now investigators are saying this looks like arson. They are still working to nail down the exact cause. A passer by saw a flicker of destruction begin to roar as they drove by and called 911. Moments later, flames were shooting 100 feet into the night sky.

"It was extremely hot," said Grigg. He got the call shortly after firefighters arrived. And volunteers came from every direction. Grigg watched as they managed to save about half of his stock.

"Insurance isn't going to cover the cost of the pallets. It'll cover some of my equipment. But that's $30,000-$40,000 just gone," Grigg said.

Still, he is thankful no one was hurt. Grigg showed us around the property as an employee worked for hours on end, pushing scorched pieces of pallet into the burn pile.

Slowly, they work to extinguish the little that's left of the blaze, by letting it burn out. And almost as slowly, the loss of a business settled in.

"A lot of work, a lot of work," Grigg said as he stared out at a carpet of charcoal before him. "Well, got a lot of work to do, but we'll make it."

The damage estimate is so far at $150,000. Scott Grigg is hoping someone will come forward to police with information about who started this fire.