A fire in Southern Alberta is being investigated as arson.

On February 5th at around 5 a.m., emergency crews attended a fire at the Southern Alberta Livestock Exchange auction market in Fort Macleod.

Fort Macleod RCMP says the fire was suspicious in nature and is being investigated as arson.

General manager Allan Lively says luckily the blaze was limited to the office area on the north end of the building.

"Our ring is still functional and our kitchen side is still functional, so we've set up makeshift offices in our boardroom, but our office is completely lost 100 per cent. The rest of the building is good, we've been carrying on our sales, we haven't missed any."

According to Lively, the suspect took a methodical approach, taking out two cameras and systematically rooting through filing cabinets before setting the place ablaze.

"I don't know if he was here to burn it down and just got lucky and found the cards or if he actually came to rob it. There was $250 cash in a drawer and he didn't take it. What he did was bizarre and it was random."

The only things believed to have been stolen are two credit cards.

Lively expressed frustration at the RCMP's response, saying they only discovered the cards had been stolen two days after the fire since no one was allowed in the building while the initial investigation was carried out.

He and a few co-workers have been working to track the suspect down by checking the bank statements on the cards, which show they were used in several Alberta communities including Okotoks and Nanton.

They've been gathering surveillance images from businesses to pass onto the RCMP, who Lively says were delayed in doing the same.

"A lot of the stores we went to all said their cameras backups lasted only seven days, and we didn't get there until Thursday, so by the time the RCMP maybe got there it would've been Friday or Saturday. We could've lost some footage that was important."

Lively and a few other employees from the livestock exchange met with RCMP on Feb. 14, and were told RCMP hadn't come up with any major leads.

He says he's planning to release images of the suspect on the auction market's Facebook page, offering a reward for the identity of the suspect.