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VIDEO: Fire hits chicken house
No one was injured, and no chickens were in the 15,000-square-foot structure at the time of the fire, said Strasburg Fire Company Assistant Chief John Stoltzfus.
A garbage truck driver on his regular weekly rounds discovered the fire at 464 Weaver Road, shortly before 7 a.m.
"Smoke was coming out of a vent," said Dave Appel of Cauler Waste Disposal. "Then flames started rolling up through the roof. They were 20 feet high."
He moved his garbage truck back from the fire because a large propane tank is about 40 feet from the chicken house. It was not damaged by the fire.
A second alarm was called for the fire "so it wouldn't get out of control," Stoltzfus said. About 60 firefighters from area departments responded to the call and quickly put out the blaze.
Stoltzfus said damage was between $150,000 and $200,000.
The fire scene was back a long lane on an 80-acre dairy and poultry farm owned by Marianne Weaver-Hart of Strasburg Township.
She is renting the property to a family who was using a skid loader to clean out the chicken house Monday, she said.
The family cleaned the skid loader with water at the end of the day and perhaps that somehow caused the fire, Weaver-Hart said.
The fire went through the roof of the east end of the chicken house, above where the skid loader was parked overnight, Stoltzfus said.
State police Fire Marshal James DeWalt said only that the cause of the fire was accidental.
Chickens had been in the 300-foot-long structure as recently as a few weeks ago, Weaver-Hart said. Two other chicken houses stand nearby, but they were not damaged in the fire.
Weaver and Miller roads were closed for a time.
