By Lauren Young
Staff Writer
A massive fire destroyed a Cazenovia barn on May 19 in what was called a “total loss,” eliciting response from six area fire departments and taking about an hour to fully extinguish.
The equipment barn, located on 7651 Temperance Hill Road in Cazenovia, was 1,000 plus feet from the main road, making it all the more difficult to extinguish.
“Getting water was in issue at first because the pond was past the barn, which was on fire,” said Second Assist Chief Jay Kelchner of the Cazenovia Fire Department.
In addition to the Cazenovia Fire Department, the Manlius, Morrisville, Chittenango, Erieville, New Woodstock and Delphi Falls fire departments also responded to the fire, helping to extinguish it by pumping from a pond by the road.
“There were multiple pieces of large-scale farm equipment and construction equipment destroyed,” said Kelchner, which included a dump truck, a wheel loader and a farm tractor. “There were still propane cylinders in the barn too, exploding and shooting through the air, so we had to wait those out,” he added.
Though the cause of the fire is still unknown, the village fire department was first dispatched because of a car on fire – what they weren’t aware of was that the car was on fire inside of the barn, which was also on fire.
“[Barns] burn pretty quick,” said Kelchner, adding that the barn’s modern design and metal exterior with beam construction underneath decreased its burn time.
From dispatch to their arrival, it took about one hour for the fire to be extinguished, shorter than most barn fires usually take to put out.
By comparison, Kelchner said some “older, wooden barns will burn for hours and hours.”
Despite this, Kelchner said the barn was burned beyond repair, “a total loss.”
While Kelchner said responders were notified quickly of the fire, a large portion of the Cazenovia Fire Department was attending a joint funeral service during the fire, while others were setting up a fundraiser.
The joint funeral service was for longtime Cazenovians Bill and Jean Daggat, who died just one day apart, with the memorial service held at the First Presbyterian Church in Cazenovia — which is thankfully less than half a mile away from the Cazenovia Fire Department.
But because their firetrucks weren’t normally where they usually are, the team had a “momentary response issue” because firefighters had to return to the firehouse in another truck to put on their gear and get in the village fire trucks.
“We did have to come back to chase a couple of hot spots too,” he said, adding how later that night, himself, along with a few other firefighters, had to return to Temperance Hill Road in the middle of prepping their fundraiser to extinguish the hot spots.
No one was severely injured and no animals died, though the owner of the barn was working within in at the time. While he attempted to drag his pickup truck out from inside the barn, the truck ended up burned beyond repair as well.
Despite suffering burns to his left hand and face, he refused to go to the hospital, instead requesting to be bandaged up and left at his property to stay with his farm and tend to its damage.
