A month after a devastating fire killed more than 200,000 chickens, investigators still haven’t determined a cause.
The fire at a Darke County poultry farm took nine hours to extinguish and more than 30 fire departments from Ohio and Indiana responded. That includes Darke, Preble, Miami, and Montgomery Counties.
“So we had to bring our water to the scene – that's why so many different departments were on the scene, because we had to call for a lot of water tankers or tenders to bring water to the scene," said Tim Shahan, the deputy fire chief with the New Madison Fire Department. "So that was the biggest challenge.”
The New Madison Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched at 6:03 a.m. Feb 4 due to heavy smoke on Billman Road. Shahan said the smoke was so heavy, fire fighters struggled to initially see the fire and any birds.
"Visibility was very low, I mean feet. It was a lot of wind conditions that were blowing smoke, everything back on the units that were operating on the scene."
Shahan said the fire damaged three structures on the expansive property.
“The one exposure ended up being the largest fire, the large barn," Shahan said. "The second exposure building was a secondary barn they stored manure in from the chicken barns and that had fire and that was controlled pretty quickly.”
"While 200,000 is a large number, it is quite small in comparison to the number of chickens raised in our region, or the number of chickens who have died as a result of the bird flu," said Caden Buschur, a Darke County OSU Extension Educator. "There have been roughly 14.6 million birds killed in Ohio at this time from this year’s outbreak of bird flu. It is certainly devastating to see this fire happen at a time when the poultry industry is already so tumultuous."
According to Buschur, the chicken barn that burnt down was part of a pullet operation.
"Meaning that it raised young chickens that were not yet laying eggs," he said. "These pullets would eventually get transported to laying facilities, who would collect and sell the eggs."
An estimate of damages isn’t available yet but Shahan said the wind conditions were so strong that the department was lucky the fire didn’t spread to even more structures on the property.
"There's multiple chicken houses if you want to call them that," he said. "Our main exposure was the chicken barn — It was not the building of origin. It was actually exposure but it became the largest fire."
The Ohio State Fire Marshal hasn’t said when its investigation will be done and the business owner couldn’t be reached for comment.
