Investigators who are still looking for the cause of Darke County Fire, in which 200,000 chickens were killed

A month after a devastating fire killed more than 200,000 chickens, the investigators have not yet found a cause.

The fire on a poultry farm made of Darke County took nine hours to extinguish and reacted more than 30 fire brigades from Ohio and Indiana. This includes Darke, Preble, Miami and Montgomery Counties.

“So we had to bring our water into the scene – so there were so many different departments on site because we had to demand many water tankers or tenders to bring water into the scene,” said Tim Shahan, the deputy fire chief of the new Madison Fire Department. “

The new Madison volunteer fire brigade was sent on February 4 at 6:03 a.m. for strong smoke on Billman Road. Shahan said the smoke was so heavy that fire fighters initially tried the fire and all birds.

“The view was very low, I mean feet. It was a lot of wind conditions that blow smoke, everything back on the units that operated on site.”

Shahan said the fire damaged three structures on expansive property.

“The only exposure was the greatest fire, the great barn,” said Shahan.

“While 200,000 are a large number, it is quite small compared to the number of chickens grew up in our region or the number of chickens that have died from the consequences of bird flu,” said Caden Buschur, an OSU expansion educator from Darke County. “In Ohio, this year's outbreak of bird flu was killed about 14.6 million birds.

According to Buschur, the chicken barn, the burned down, was part of a pullet operation.

“This means that young chickens who did not yet lay eggs,” he said. “These calls would finally be transported to laying devices that would collect and sell the eggs.”

An estimate of the damage is not yet available, but Shahan said that the wind conditions were so strong that the department was lucky that the fire did not spread to even more structures on the property.

“There are several chicken houses if they want to call them that,” he said. “Our main pollution was the chicken barn – it was not the building of origin. It was actually the exposure, but it was the greatest fire.”

Ohio State Marshall's fireman did not say when his investigation was carried out and the business owner could not be achieved for a comment.