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By LANCE MARTIN

rrspin.com

GARYSBURG – One of the biggest commercial fires in Garysburg is now down to the monitoring phase, town fire Chief Roy Bell said Wednesday afternoon.

“We’ve got it pretty much knocked down,” he said. “We’re going to let the peanuts burn themselves out on the eastern end of the building because that was pretty much destroyed.”

Bell said he plans to keep a truck and two firefighters at the Hampton Farms Company Store on Highway 46 for at least the next 24 hours so that officials with the Severn-based company can decide what their next move will be in ridding the warehouse of some of the farm stock peanuts that were stored in the warehouse which adjoins a retail store where the company’s products are sold.

Bell said the fire, which started Tuesday morning, is one of the biggest that the department has responded to in its district.

“This is the biggest fire we’ve been to in our end in terms of commercial,” he stated.

The fire chief, who is also the longtime town mayor, said firefighters believe the fire started from an exhaust fan “because when our guys got up there they could see sparks coming from the fan and by all that dust being up there when they tried to extinguish it just all went woof. They had to get out because they got overcome by the flames, the fire and the smoke. They couldn’t stay in there because that dust pretty much ignited.”

When the firefighters arrived Tuesday after the fire was called in between 9 a.m. to 9:10 p.m. they observed smoke coming out of the end of the building.

“We had to go up a flight of steps,” Bell explained. “Once we got on the catwalk and started walking towards it they could see that it was possibly coming from the fan. We don’t know if it was up there smoldering, waiting to ignite or what. Once we got up there and the guys started to extinguish it, that’s when it started burning.”

That’s also when it became the main objective to get firefighters out “because we didn’t want anybody to get hurt because there was one way in and one way out. That’s when we started attacking it from the outside.”

In all, around 17 fire departments from Halifax and Northampton counties as well as Virginia responded, representing anywhere from 90 to 100 firefighters or more.

Many of the responding fire departments were dispatched to shuttling water due to pressure issues.

“That’s when I paged out all the rest of the fire departments because I needed water and some of them to help fight the fire because we were getting water out of the river and out of the drought bed,” Bell said.

Thus far there has been no monetary value attached to the fire, Bell said.

“All those peanuts, you’ve got to include those damages as well,” he said. “We were able to save about four-fifths of the building. About a fifth of the building burned. Our whole objective was not to let the whole building burn so we pretty much kept it at a break where we had a wall and the best thing was (the owner) would rather have the peanuts burn then for us to spread them all over his yard. We tried to work with the owner and tried to minimize as much damage as we could on his end.”

About 200 feet of the warehouse was destroyed and the rest was saved, said Bell.

“That was the only place that got damaged. The rest of it was good. He was still able to run his store,” Bell remarked.

Bell and Gaston fire Chief Ed Porter Jr. shared incident command duties.

“I shared IC (duties) with Gaston because we had some folks on the back and some guys on the front. I think with all the manpower we had and just the two of us, I think we did a wonderful job. We had our emergency management and they were making sure we got our water and got whatever resources we needed,” Bell said.

He also praised the work of 911 center dispatchers.

“The 911 center did a marvelous job in terms of reaching out to fire departments when I told them I needed different fire departments. Those guys responded real well. Those guys really helped us,” he stated.

Bell said a fire of this type — peanuts or cotton — is one of the worst to fight. “ … It smolders from within and you can’t get to it. It’s just so difficult to get the water where it needs to get to. You just contain it in a certain area.”

Now, he said, the peanuts continue to burn.

“We’re monitoring until he gets somebody to get those peanuts out,” Bell said

Throughout the firefighting efforts, which went on through the night, there were no injuries, Bell said.

“That was the main thing I told them. My main objective was to make sure these guys fought this thing and fought it safely,” Bell concluded.

(Lance Martin is the Editor and Publisher of www.rrspin.com. Permission was received to publish this story.)