Fire investigators remain at the site of the Niagara Lubricant Company fire that sent huge amounts of black smoke billowing throughout the Black Rock section of Buffalo earlier this week. As YNN's Ryan Burgess tells us, despite the concern about the toxins people may have been breathing during the fire, an air quality test has yet to be conducted.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Fire investigators, including a national response team, remained at the site of a fire at the Niagara Lubricant Company on Chandler Street, which sent plumes of thick, black smoke throughout the surrounding neighborhoods in the Black Rock section of Buffalo on Wednesday. The fire was apparently fueled by oils and lubricants stored inside the burning building.

"We did not take air samples. Quite frankly, to take air samples out there while that event was going on, we would have had to deploy hundreds of assets throughout the community to effectively take air samples," said Buffalo Fire commissioner Garnell Whitefield, Jr.

Despite the smoke, air quality samples have yet to be taken by the Buffalo Fire Department, or the EPA, who's spokesman, Michael Basile, tells YNN that the agency hasn't even been on site yet. An emergency response crew is arriving this weekend from New Jersey.

As for the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, Megan Gollwitzer, a spokesman with the agency released a statement saying:

"DEC has not traditionally played a role in air monitoring at short term incidents such as a one to two day fire, and is not generally equipped for conducting air monitoring for extremely short -term events."

After becoming concerned about the lack of local, state, or federal agency testing, the Clean Air Coalition of WNY conducted its own, independent, tests at the site. The executive director says the test sample will be shipped to an EPA registered lab and hope to have results in about a week.

Coalition members have been canvassing the neighborhood adjacent to the fire, after receiving several calls from concerned residents.

"A lot of folks felt nauseous, kids went to the emergency room, so there are clearly people that had health impacts that were related to their exposure," said Clean Air Coalition of WNY executive director Erin Heaney.

Blocks away from the fire, neighbors said they're still unsure what, exactly, they've been breathing the past few days. They're also wondering why air quality testing hasn't been done.

"Absolutely that concerns me. Those were toxic fumes. Whether we were inside or outside of our homes, we were directly effected," said neighbor Debra Annsippel.

"We were getting sick off of it. You could smell it inside of the house. It was really bad," said neighbor Teki Easley.

"I couldn't breathe. It was black smoke covering our houses. I was choking. It was terrible," said neighbor Catherine Cappellino.

The Clean Air Coalition is holding a meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the American Legion where they hope to meet with residents impacted by the fire and release the results of their air quality test, if they're available.