Black smoke could be seen billowing for several kilometres from a barn fire near Goldstone Monday that caused about $100,000 in damage.
Thirty-six Mapleton Township firefighters responded to a property on Wellington Road 8 at 10:40 a.m. Upon their arrival, they found the beige brick structure near the back of the property engulfed in smoke. Flames shot through the roof and windows a few minutes later, said fire chief Rick Richardson. The metal roof eventually caved in, but crews easily prevented the fire from spreading as the flames gradually died down.
![Smoke could be seen for kilometres from a barn fire on Wellington Road 8 (between Wellington Road 12 and Sideroad 17) on Monday afternoon. No one was hurt, but damage is estimated at $100,000. [Elena Maystruk / The Observer]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/post_fire.jpg)
“We just protected the shed and the cornfield, put some water on that to protect it from exposure – that’s all we did really,” he said.
The barn held hay in a loft upstairs and a number of tires. Several turkeys inside the barn managed to escape into the surrounding fields unharmed. The fire started at the rear of the structure, a short-circuited heat lamp, used for the turkeys, is suspected as the cause.
Firefighters spent about an hour-and-a-half containing the flames to the barn after the roof caved in and left after three hours on the site. Favourable winds blew the smoke away from the residential part of the farm and a nearby shed, and the fire caused minimal heat damage to the surrounding cornfield, Richardson said.
“It was fairly boring for us; the wind was going in the right direction so we didn’t have to worry too much about the house or smoke blowing across the road.”
