Date: August 26, 2018
Location: Port Deposit, Maryland (USA)
Address: 155 Mount Ararat Farm Road, 21904
Type: Dust Fire
Fuel: Silage
Industry: Dairy Farming (Agriculture)
Equipment: Hay Silo
Company: Mount Ararat Farms, Inc.
Database Incidents: None Recorded
Loss: No Injuries
Capital Cost: $10,000
Status: Open
Confirmation: Unconfirmed
Company Description:
According to its profile on Manta.com, Mount Ararat Farms, Inc. is a dairy farm that was incorporated in 1996, although it has been a working farm for more than 300 years and been owned by the Brown family since 1935. It currently has 200 dairy cows and facilities for producing cattle feed.
Incident Description:
On August 26, 2018, local news source the Cecil Whig reported a silo fire at a dairy farm in Port Deposit, Maryland. One of the farm employees saw smoke issuing from the top of the structure, which contained a fermented high-moisture grain called silage, and called for assistance.
Volunteer firefighters struggled to fight the flames in the 70-foot-tall metal and concrete silo, which was roughly 80 percent full with animal feed. They called in reinforcements from other departments, one of which brought a hose with a special nozzle that works like a sprinkler. The fire crews positioned a ladder against the silo, removed the wooden doors to the silo blower, and slid the hose through the top of the chute to flood the interior with water.
A volunteer fire chief speculated that the fire started when static electricity ignited hay in a chute that fills and empties the silo. He said that when dry hay was extracted to feed the dairy cows, some of it became stuck and later ignited.
It took firefighters approximately two hours to get the fire under control. Although there were no reported injuries and most of the animal feed could be salvaged, the fire caused $10,000 in property damage.
Sources:
Cecil Whig
