Sure was glad I was able to go to bed early Saturday night, New Years Day, cause the next morning started early for us firefighters…I was sleeping good at 7 am when my pager went off and the dispatcher announced a Barn on fire near the north end of our district. I bounced out of bed and Missy bounded from the bed and waited by the sunroom door as I got dressed…I knew it was gonna be cold out so I layered up, grabbed my camera and out the door we went to the truck…so glad it warms up fast, cause it was really cold out and seems like as soon as you get inside one, it gets even colder. Heater was running on full blast tho by the time we hit the new Elmont Bridge over I-44 and as soon as we crossed over we fell in right behind Ray Enloe who was driving our tanker out of Station Five. Ray was doing a good job of driving it and as we neared the old Wolf Run Farms, I heard Bob respond with Pumper 834 out of Station Three, so we knew he would be on scene shortly and give us a size up…we spotted a brownish gray column of smoke to the northwest shortly after that, so we knew it was going pretty good. Just past the old Japan store, we heard Bob go on scene and advise the barn was fully involved and partially collapsed…I hoped if any animals were inside before they were out ahead of the fire. As we approached the turnoff to Pine Valley Road, we caught up with the Station Five pumper, 854, which I took as a bad sign, figured it musta been running sluggish again. As we made the top of the hill on Pine Valley, I looked to my left and saw what was left of the barn smoking heavily…partially collapsed as Bob had said…

…since the ground was frozen solid, the drivers pulled through the gate and joined Bob up in the field near the barn…I pulled off to the side of the road and left the truck running and the heater on low for Missy…arriving about 7:15, I wound up staying for three hours…found out soon after arrival that the barn owner had over forty goats inside the barn at the time of the fire, many with newborns, all perishing in the fast moving fire. He also lost his tractor and several large round bales of hay. Right off the bat, while cooling things down so firefighters could enter the remaining structure, several sheets of tin had to be removed to an out of our way location, and with a few junior firefighters along, we had a good work crew for that task….

 

Our juniors do quite a bit of work, they relieve the rest of us of a lot of extra work we would have to do if they weren`t there, so many of us are grateful to have them on our department and responding to the calls with us.  They are a good bunch of hard working guys and gals, and have a good crew of supervisors training them and watching over them, too.

 

..I backed off and shot some with the smoke plume going way up into the cold sky…

 

..getting the sheets of tin out of the way enabled our guys to get in and put some water on the hot spots remaining inside the structure, which we found out was originally a block structure..most barns are frame structures from the get go…

…Billy Harris, aka Dr Destructo, in action here knocking down some of the block wall to make it safe for the others walking around inside…last thing we would want to have to do is dig someone out if they had this wall fall down on them. The steam and smoke cloud from hitting the hot spots provided some nice photo opportunities while I was there…

 

and while Cody appears to be sitting in this next one, I assure you he isnt, or we would have been hitting his butt with the hose, that bale is definitely on fire…

…I had several images of firefighters in and emerging from smoke clouds, reminding me of the song, Ghost Riders in the Sky….

I moved over to the west side of the barn as I saw the sun shining through the smoke and forming a pattern of the tree on the east side of the barn…

..and from this side, it was easy to see alot of the heavy smoke was coming from several round hay bales stacked up on the side of the barn, and needed to be removed so better access could be gained to the remainder of the hot spots.  Firefighters tried to muscle the top bale off its resting spot…..and Jay Arnold lending a hand to see if two strong backs were better than one…

..however it was determined that the bales were just too heavy to move, so they decided to allow them to continue burning instead…

 

 

..and once the fire was burning, we just had to pull layers off and keep it going…pretty soon a few more guys joined the effort…

..but even then, the fire wasn`t burning quickly enough, prob due to the cold weather, so we talked to the barn owner and discovered one of his neighbors, Ron Juergens, had come over to check on him and Ron volunteered to help us with his tractor and hydraulic lift on the back of it….

…and pulled about six bales out for us and took them to the far end of the field so we could roll them out and let them burn out…

…now our Juniors come into play again, helping our senior firefighters pull the bales apart and roll them out so air can get to them and help them burn more freely and faster…here Drew is helping Billy roll one out….

…and then it just becomes a matter of keeping the fires stoked, allowing air to get to the fire, and rolling them around or stoking them up…

 

and as one can imagine, this creates a lot of smoke, so thick at times you couldnt see the trucks on the other side, not to mention sometimes you couldnt even see your buddy in front of you just a few feet away…again the song ” Ghostriders in the Sky ” comes to mind…

and if anyone was looking for something…well we would have a tough time finding it I`m sure…

and they continued to roll out the other bales and burn them too…

….in the next series of photos you`ll see the smoke again creating opportunities as juniors assist firefighters in rolling out more bales…the barn in the background…

 

About this time, hot spots were seen flaring up in the barn structure again, so the juniors were asked to go assist a firefighter on the hoseline at the barn…again more opportunities with smoke and sunbeams created…

..and more ghostly smoke with firefighters emerging from the clouds and wisps of smoke…

and while the juniors were assisting on the hoseline…Jay Arnold was working on a stubborn hay bale that didnt want to burn as fast as we would have liked it to….

…talk about a super nice guy…I`ve known Jay for a long time, since high school and now he has a son, Kyle, who is a chip off his dad as well…couldn`t find a couple of better guys…