Farm fires: when the unthinkable happens

FAMILY AND friends help clean up after a major barn fire that occurred this sum­mer on a Shelby County farm. SDN Photo/LUKE GRONNEBERG

BY MIKE SEFFRIN

mseffrin@sdnccg.com

Farm­ers have many things to worry about: the weather, crops, live­stock, fer­til­izer prices, equip­ment main­te­nance and pur­chases, when to plant and har­vest. But some have had to deal with yet another worry — fire.

Fires destroy build­ings and equip­ment and kill live­stock, and even in if they

don’t spread to a farmer’s house and threaten the fam­ily, they can have a dev­as­tat­ing impact on farm operations.

Accord­ing to the Fire Pre­ven­tion Bureau of the State Fire Marshal’s Office, fires dam­aged or destroyed 545 barns in the state last year, caus­ing nearly $11 mil­lion in losses, nine civil­ian injuries and 12 fire­fighter injuries.

Dairy farmer Ken Pleiman, of the Fort Loramie area in Shelby County, knows

what a fire can do to a farm­ing oper­a­tion. In Jan­u­ary 2009, he lost two barns, live­stock and equip­ment in a blaze.

He didn’t have time to con­tem­plate his losses, how­ever. There were cows to milk.

“We just loaded up our heifers and took them to other farms,” said Pleiman, who was helped by friends and neigh­bors. “We built the new barn and got them back in there.”

Some of the sur­viv­ing cows are still feel­ing the effects of the fire sev­eral years later. Pleiman said a few heifers suf­fered lung dam­age from the smoke.

“They’re still not doing very good,” he said. “It kind of stunted their growth.”

Pleiman milks about 75 to 80 head of cat­tle. His herd totals 160, with heifers and small calves.

The fire struck on a foggy night while Pleiman was sleep­ing. It was so foggy that the blaze appar­ently had a good start before any­one saw it.

“It (barn) was burned down when peo­ple found it,” Pleiman said. “There was absolutely noth­ing left.”

Pleiman milks twice a day, so there was no time to waste in get­ting his oper­a­tion back under way.

“You’ve got to start clean­ing up right away,” he said.

Pleiman observed the sit­u­a­tion was worse because it was win­ter. Warmer weather would have made things easier.

Pleiman had some expe­ri­ence with farm fires. A fire occurred on his uncle’s farm a few years earlier.“He lost he his big barn, too,” Pleiman said.

He helped his uncle after that fire, and also his wife’s nephew, after a sep­a­rate fire. So, when Pleiman suf­fered his loss, he didn’t lack for assistance.

“We had plenty of help,” he said.

Like other farm­ers who have suf­fered fire losses before and since, Pleiman real­ized that work still needed to be done despite the tragedy.

“You don’t think much about it,” he said, “you just jump in and do it.”

Pleiman said inves­ti­ga­tors believe his fire began in a skid loader with an elec­tri­cal problem.

As for con­cern about the pos­si­bil­ity of future fires, Pleiman said, “There’s not really much you can do. You just have to hope it doesn’t hap­pen again.”

Mike Sef­frin is a reporter for the

Sid­ney Daily News.

Posted by Rachel Lloyd on Nov 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.