Fire destroys barn
There were no animals in a barn that burned Tuesday night, Harleysville Community Fire Company Chief Kevin Wasson said.
“It was just used for equipment storage,” he said.
The equipment included tractors and a combine, he said. The barn was a total loss.
The fire company was dispatched at 9:21 p.m. for what was initially reported as a house fire in the 400 block of Upper Mainland Road, he said.
A passerby saw the fire and called it in, he said.
There were no injuries, he said.
The fire was fully involved, and walls were collapsing when the fire company arrived, Wasson said.
It probably had been burning awhile before being noticed, he said.
“It’s so far off the road, and it sits behind a larger barn,” he said.
“Probably in the early stages, it’s very hard to see from the road, and it’s also a quiet road,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me that it got going a little bit before someone actually noted and saw it.”
A second alarm was put out, which brought in several other local fire companies, he said.
The fire was placed under control in 20 minutes, with firefighters remaining on the scene for about three hours, wetting things down and assisting the fire marshal with the investigation, Wasson said.
The cause of the fire was not yet determined, but does not appear to be suspicious, he said.
“With barn fires, it’s very, very complicated to determine cause,” Wasson said.
“The barn’s obviously a total loss and everything inside pretty much is a total loss, so it takes time to sift through everything and try to understand what the most likely cause would’ve been.”
The homeowner was working with the insurance company and hopefully will be able to rebuild the barn and replace the equipment, he said.
Fire companies from Skippack, Towamencin, Souderton, Hatfield, Telford and Upper Salford, along with Harleysville Area Emergency Medical Services and Lower Salford Township Police Department, assisted in the response to the fire.