Many horses were unable to escape the blaze because they had been locked in their stalls by owners fearful of having their horses stolen, Assistant Fire Chief Craig Gillis said.
Three horses found outside the barn survived the blaze, including a colt who suffered minor burns and was treated on-scene by veterinarians.
Gillis said the cause of the fire may never be determined because the amount of destruction caused by the fire and manipulation of the scene by water streams have made it difficult to get a clear picture of what happened prior to the blaze.
“There’s so many different things it could have been,” Gillis said. “It had been a high-heat day, and obviously they had electrical wiring in there and they had rodents that could have been chewing on the wires.”
The barn, which was located on Greenville Avenue near Exchange Parkway, was owned by Allen resident Merle Wells, who rented out the barn to area horse owners.
The barn was built in 1973 and grandfathered in as fire codes changed, Gillis said. Inspections of the building were not being conducted prior to the blaze.
“If we were to build that same building today, it would have fire sprinklers and fire alarms and all the things that code requires in a building these days,” he said.
The building burned quickly, Gillis said, because its lumber was old and had dried out. Feed and hay inside the barn also accelerated the fire’s spread. Firefighters were on-scene to put out smaller secondary fires three days
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