Fire in Dawson CAFO breaks out when volatile gases ignite

'They were lucky,' says veteran Dawson firefighter Bill Kempf

0
4029
A fire Friday afternoon in a Dawson hog confinement rekindled Saturday morning, bringing firefighters from the Dawson and Perry stations of the Perry Volunteer Fire Department to the scene at 11032 160th St.

A fire Friday afternoon in a hog confinement near Dawson rekindled Saturday morning, bringing firefighters from the Dawson and Perry stations of the Perry Volunteer Fire Department to the scene at 11032 160th St.

Fire was reported in the southernmost of the two confinement buildings owned by Victor Allas LLC shortly after 4 p.m. Friday, according to Dawson Station Fire Chief Bill Kempf.

“They had a fire in a heater yesterday and thought it was all out,” Kempf said Saturday. “They started their fans up this morning, and there was still a little fire up in the insulation in the attic, so when they started the fans, it just pulled air right through it and started the coals up a little bit. We had to pull some of the ceiling down to totally get up into it and get rid of it.”

Each of the CAFO’s confinement buildings houses 3,600 swine.

“They lost some pigs yesterday,” Kempf said. “It was probably the smoke that got them, but I don’t know.”

The Dawson fire chief said the fire started Friday when volatile gases were ignited by a pilot light in a hanging furnace.

“They’re taking manure out of the building,” he said, “and they forgot to shut the ignition off on one burner. When they moved that manure out, the gas kind of went up and caught the furnace on fire in that one area and went up into the ceiling. They had a little structural damage up there in the rafters, so we pulled all that down and got up in there and made sure it was all out and carried that stuff outside.”

Removing manure from a manure pit underneath a confinement building agitates volatile gases in the pit, such as methane gas and hydrogen sulfide gas, which sometimes reach lethal concentrations, according to livestock biochemists.

“They open curtains more and turn all your outside fans on,” Kempf said of the manure removel process. “You have to have somebody there to regulate and be around to watch the hogs while they’re doing that.”

He said the confinement was full of hogs at the time of the fire.

“We had to move all the pigs out of two or three pens and over into others pens so we could work in there and pull the ceiling down,” Kempf said. “We did all that this morning.  We took all the ceiling out and went back in and asked where it was charred. They were up there watching for it, and we took the thermal imager up there, so as far as we’re concerned it’s out this time.”

The veteran firefighter said the confinement owners were “lucky they found it when they did. I think there was a guy around both times, one of the employees. You hear of too many cases where it burned the barn down and killed all the hogs. They were lucky.”

The Dallas County Sheriff’s office also responded.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.