Our barn and tack room before the fire.  The tack room is that little building to the left.

Here is the story:

I was wind rowing the alfalfa on Dad’s 20 acres when I noticed the smoke. The smoke was coming from around the area by our tack room. The first couple of rounds on the hayfield I just figured Mom was burning some garbage in the burn barrel, which is near there also. Each round though showed more and more smoke. By the third time around the field I knew it was actually the tack room on fire. The tack room sits not 10 feet from our barn.

Good afternoon. My name is Seth Elkington and I am the Oregon State representative for Public Speaking. This past summer we had a tragic barn fire and today I would like to give you some suggestions in case you ever have to face this same situation.

I jumped down from the tractor and ran through the pasture. As I was nearing the tack room I heard Mom scream. I knew she would go call the Fire Department. But the phone was clear down at the house. My first suggestion is to have a portable phone. If we had had one Mom could have been spraying water on the building while she was talking to the dispatcher. As it turned out, the tack room was totally engulfed in flames by the time Mom was through talking on the phone.

When I reached the barnyard, there were flames pouring out of the windows of the tack room and the amount of smoke billowing from the metal roof was incredible. That building held all of our horse gear. We had washed my Welsh colt and one other pony that morning and put them in a stall in the barn. It was the stall closest to the tack room. When I ran in there to get them out I saw how smart ponies really are. They were milling around nervously, but they had their heads close to the ground where the good air was. They were also smart in that they were not afraid to escape that barn when Mom opened the stall gate. Be sure to stay as calm as possible so that your horse does not sense the danger.

I also had four FFA heifers and a steer tied up in the center part of the barn. I thought I had better get them out just to be safe. The full magnitude of the situation hadn’t hit me yet. I led the first heifer out and tied her to the far corral. By the time I returned to the barn for another heifer black smoke was pouring in from the horse stalls into the original center section. I turned the rest of my heifers and steer loose and ran them out of the barn. We closed the corral gate so the animals could not panic and run back into the barn. I thought the cattle and ponies were far enough away to be out of danger.

I couldn’t see anything by this time because the smoke was so black. I ran outside and I saw my grandparents coming down the lane. The first thing Grandpa did was to go for the hose in the corner of the barn but the flames were so hot and so overwhelming by now that he couldn’t do anything to stop the fire.

The hose was a good idea. My second suggestion is to always have a good rubber hose close by that is long enough to reach every corner of your barn. It should also be the kind that will stay flexible in all kinds of weather.

Finally, after what seemed like forever but in actuality was only 6 minutes, the fire trucks arrived, but they went down the neighbor’s lane. Third suggestion: send someone to wait at the end of your road to guide the emergency vehicles to the right place.

When the trucks pulled in to our barnyard the stacks were not on fire yet. The road to the stack went too close to the barn and the trucks couldn’t go that way. We told them to just drive through the fence, but they couldn’t do that. By the time they made it around to the haystacks again it was too late. At this point we wished we’d had some wire cutters so we could have got the trucks through to the hay faster.

I had forgotten about the ponies and heifers in the corral behind the barn. I probably wouldn’t have remembered them at all until Mom screamed for help to get them out of there. Mom had opened the far gate and the ponies and loose heifers got away, but the heifer I had tied couldn’t escape. Mom burned her arms trying to free her. I saw two men go around the south side of the barn. One had the water hose and the other had a knife. The man who cut the heifer loose also suffered some burns even with all of his gear. The heifer was burned pretty badly. Her entire left side sloughed off over the course of the next few days. Now the heifer is doing fine but her hip and shoulder have not completely healed even today. If that had been one of the ponies we would probably have had to put them down, because they would never be able to carry a saddle or harness again.

I couldn’t sleep for at least 2 days. Every time I closed my eyes I saw our big, red, two-story barn go up in flames. It was a 75-year-old barn that was a landmark in our area. I would also see all of my horse tack disappearing in smoke…. All my trophy blankets, my halters with the gold plaques, my great great grandfather’s saddle….even my mom’s trophy halters. The sentimental value of all those things will never be replaced no matter how much insurance money there is.

The insurance people were out the next day. They were asking about all of the things inside the barn and tack room. This is where we needed good records. We had to make a list of every tiny little thing we lost in the barn, from saddles right down to a package of Chicago screws. The list had to include: a description of the item, when we purchased it, where we purchased it, the cost at the time of purchase, what it was worth at the time of the fire, and the cost to replace it.

Our Personal Property insurance policy did have Replacement cost. This covered our horse equipment since they are primarily for pleasure. It did not cover the hay or any equipment used for our cattle business like electronic scales and Bull semen tanks. We had insurance on the buildings. In order to cover our cattle equipment we should have had a business policy. Suggestion # 4: make sure you have the correct kind of insurance for whatever you have stored in your barn. And Suggestion #5: always make sure you have Replacement cost added to your policy.

The first payment from the insurance company was for the depreciated value of all our property. For example in our case the insurance company depreciated our saddles to $133 each! This is why it is important to have Replacement cost on your policy. If we hadn’t had this we would never had had enough money to replace our tack.

Suggestion # 6: when you send your " Loss of Property List" and anything else to your insurance company always make copies for yourself, and mail it certified with a return receipt.

As you replace the lost items you will send in the receipts to show the actual cost of the items. The insurance will then pay you the difference between the actual cost and what they have already paid in depreciated value. And again be sure you have kept copies of all the receipts.

Sometimes fires are unavoidable, as in our case. The State Fire Marshall said it looked like an electrical short in the tack room. But you can definitely be more prepared for a fire than we were. Always make sure you have a convenient water source for a good all weather hose. Get a portable phone that can be taken to the barn. Keep accurate records of your personal property. Keep your insurance up to date and make sure it is the correct kind of insurance to cover your property.

Our barn is rebuilt now and most of our horse tack has been replaced. I can’t help but look at the new metal siding on the barn and think how cold it seems. Every one of our old bridles, bits, and saddles had a special memory attached. There was the first piece of silver I got for Christmas in my first years of 4-H. There was the special headstall we got on my first time to State Fair. And most of all there was my embroidered High Point Horse blanket I worked so hard for. The new tack is great, but it just doesn’t have the memories attached. When I see it all I think of is……… The barn is on fire!!

Seth Elkington

Horse Industry Handbook, Fire Safety on Horse Farms, 1993 American Youth Horse Council, Inc., Winter 1994.

Saager, Bill, Milton-Freewater, Oregon, Fire Chief, 1997, Personal Interview.

State Farm Insurance, Mike Swinnerton Agent, Personal Interview, 1997.

Personal experience, July 5, 1997.

We loved this barn probably more than our home.  This is an older picture.  Since this picture was taken we had put a new roof on the barn and tack room and given the whole thing a new coat of red paint.  The barn had been in my family for three generations.  My hand print from when I was a child was set in the cement of the front ramp.  My grandparents had milked cows.  Most of the milk stanchions were still there and you could see the names of the cows penciled on each stanchion.

We have a new barn now.  It is much smaller and I suppose it is a more efficient use of space, but it will never replace this piece of American history.

The haystack burned for a week and then we finally set a row of sprinklers over it for two days.

The heifer's hide started sloughing off within hours.  My mother and I went to the vet right away and got medication for her.  The medication was to prevent swelling and for pain.  It worked pretty good because she never missed a meal.  We moved the animals over to my Dad's barn.  The main problem with the heifer was to keep the flies off.

This is the heifer about  2-3 months later.  Not long after this we turned her back out with the cows.  Two of the worst spots were her point of shoulder and her hip bone.  They didn't completely heal for about a year.  She calved that next spring and raised a nice little heifer.  The hair did eventually grow back except for the shoulder and hip.  By the way, her ears are there.... I just cut them off with my camera accidentally.

What's left of our bridles, halters, saddles, blankets, and grooming equipment.  We had 6 western saddles, two English saddles, about 30 bridles, and enough winter and summer blankets for 4 horses and 2 ponies. All the halters burned as I had just put them  away that morning.  I didn't even have a halter left to catch a horse.  Luckily  I only lost one set of cart harness.  All the harnesses that my grandfather had made were stored in another building.

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