The Oyster River Fire Department was back at the scene this morning of a major Canada Day blaze that burned through three barns and two hay storage areas near Black Creek.
Hot spots were still burning Thursday morning.
“In the hay barn, there is probably 8 to 10 feet of hay so you get one spark ember that goes down that deep and it just smoulders and smoulders and smoulders,” said Oyster River Fire Chief Bruce Green.
The fire broke out on Wednesday at 11:30 am sending a thick plume of black smoke into the air prompting numerous calls to 911.
“Dispatch said they had multiple calls on it so we knew we had something big and we left the fire hall and looked up here you could see a big column of smoke,” said Green.
Cindy Enns lives about 10 km away and was able to see the smoke.
“It was terrible. It was scary,” she said. “First of all I heard all the sirens and then I looked out our garage and you could see the smoke and we could actually smell it.”
Fire departments in Courtenay and Campbell River each sent a fire engine and a tanker truck to assist. There are no hydrants in the area so the water was brought to the scene in the tanker trucks from the nearest hydrant about one kilometre away.
Fire officials say it was windy when the blaze began and that helped the flames spread quickly through the barns.
“From what we’ve been told it sounds like they were putting hay in with a skid steer and one of the bales from up top fell on top of the back of the skid steer on top of the hot exhaust and that bale started on fire,” said Green. “There was a pretty significant wind yesterday and that wind pushed it from the hay barn right across the other barns fairly rapidly.”
Piles of car tires also burned adding to the black smoke.
The farm used to be a dairy farm full of cows but on Wednesday there were only four cows and they all escaped unharmed.
Firefighters managed to save one barn on the property.
Dean Stoltz
