7,000 6-Week-Old Turkeys Die in La Grange Poultry Barn Blaze

LA GRANGE, N.C. -- Close to 7,000 turkeys burned to death early Wednesday morning in a massive poultry barn fire in La Grange whose mysterious beginnings and thick white streams of smoke continues to be the talk of the town.

Bright lights shined and fire alarms echoed for miles outside La Grange around 5:30 a.m., when a 911 call came from Butterball's Hill Top Farm on Brothers Road about a blaze that had erupted in one of the turkey ranch's two poultry barns, neighbors said.

Crews with the La Grange Volunteer Fire Department arrived within minutes to extinguish the burn, but the wooden barn flamed with such intensity that its tin roof bowed and collapsed to the ground, reportedly killing around 7,000 6-week-old turkeys on impact, said Butterball spokeswoman Linda Compton.

The building is likely a total loss. Doug Hill, the La Grange contract farmer who raises turkeys for Butterball at his privately-owned poultry barn, spent much of Wednesday filing insurance claims to rebuild, said his wife, Joy Hill.

"We got in the car and flew over there as fast as we could, but, by the time we made it there, the barn was gone -- burned to the ground," Joy Hill told The Free Press outside the family's home in La Grange off Willie Measley Road.

Ruled an accident

The Hills said they learned of the fire around 5:28 a.m., when the man who tends the farm called their home. The groundskeeper appeared to be the only person on site Wednesday as the barn continued to smolder.

The farm sits on a large plot of rural land wedged between Aldridge Store and Brothers roads, 1 mile east of La Grange. It's surrounded by fields of 8-foot tall corn stalks.

"This is a quiet and peaceful neighborhood," said Lonnie Dean, who lives in a small mobile home community off Owens Family Road, caddy corner to the farm.

Dean, his wife Diane and neighbors were drawn outside their homes Wednesday morning by thick plumes of white smoke that billowed for hours from the row of turkey houses.

Media helicopters from as far as Raleigh swarmed overhead, giving local residents the impression an EastCare air ambulance was transporting an injured person to Greenville.

No employees were injured, however, Compton said.

Lenoir County Emergency Management Director Roger Dail said his office has completed its investigation and the cause remains undetermined.

"We ruled the fire as accidental," said Dail. "We'll keep poking around, but we'll probably never know the exact cause, due to the building collapsing."

Diane Dean said she first heard the town's fire alarm around 5:15 a.m. while she was getting ready for work. Not long after the alarm sounded, she said she saw a caravan of fire trucks and police cars pull into the farm at 5231 Brothers Road.

"It was dark out," Diane Dean recalled. "And I thought to myself, 'Wow, it must be serious.' "

Bright lights

The fire was serious and it quickly escalated out of control to the point firefighters let it burn, because the barn was "too far gone," said Linda Moye, who lives with her husband, Ronald, behind the farm.

Around the same time Diane Dean heard the alarm, Ronald Moye saw "bright lights" on his way to BJ's Grill for breakfast in the Little Baltimore area. Customers were buzzing about the blaze, Linda Moye said.

The Moyes purchased their property from Hill, who once managed the land with Wayne Rouse.

Moye said Hill eventually went solo, building a hog house and contracting with Butterball, the nation's leading supplier of turkey products, to open two poultry barns.

One housed infant turkeys, and the other, Moye said, held mature birds that were two weeks and older, being readied for shipment, Moye said. The second poultry barn appeared to be largely unharmed, which Moye, a friend of the Hills, found comforting.

"I really do hope everything is OK," Moye said.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service