A huge fire destroyed a commercial plant in Buffalo's Black Rock neighborhood two weeks ago. It burned for nearly 24 hours. As YNN's Doug Sampson tells us, a new report shows there were toxic chemicals in the smoke from that blaze.

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"Big black smoke, very thick, very hard to breathe," recalled Debra Ann Sipel, who lives across the street from the plant that burned down. "It was very uncomfortable being in the neighborhood. We were concerned obviously for the young children, and also ourselves."

"There should have been some sort of air monitoring, and find out,” said Buffalo Common Councilman Joseph Golombeck, Jr., who represents the North District where the fire happened. “If it was in fact poisonous gas, or hazardous gases, then they should have moved those people that lived there."

Members of the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York say they found benzene, a known carcinogen, at more than 10 times what the EPA considers safe levels, and numerous other chemicals.

"The good news is that the levels were not high enough to cause long-term effects,” said the director of the Clean Air Coalition of WNY, Erin Heaney. “So, no one is going to get cancer from the exposure that day. That said, the numbers were high enough to cause acute health effects."

But, the sample the group obtained is only a three minute sample of the air, six blocks away from the fire, because testers were not allowed to get closer.

"It's a very conservative sample, so it's very possible that the people who were closer, folks that were actually fighting the fire, other emergency personnel were exposed to compounds that were in concentrations much higher than what we found," said Heaney.

There's still a foul smell around Niagara Lubricant. While the damage to the building is easy to see, the real question lies in the damage we might not be able to see from the noxious fumes released in the fire. That's something that has neighbors very concerned.

"I was raspy, I couldn't breathe, short of breath for a few days, sick stomach. I was dizzy, had a headache," said one neighbor who also lives near the plant.

"We have no idea how it's going to effect us in the long term,” said Sippel. “In the short-term, yeah we weren't feeling very well. In the long-term, what's it going to do to us internally, we have no idea."

Neighbors say they have heard little from city leaders about why they were not evacuated and health effects. A call to the mayor's spokesman and the fire commissioner have not been returned.