A potato processing plant near Shelburne, Ont. was destroyed when a massive fire tore through the building early Tuesday morning.
The fire began at Tupling Farms Produce Inc. around 1:30 a.m. Shelburne is located about an hour-and-a-half northwest of Toronto.
The roof of the roughly 45,000-square foot plant collapsed and small fires continued to burn inside.
When fire crews arrived at the scene, “the flames were probably about another 100 feet in the air,” Mulmur-Melancthon Fire Chief Jim Clayton said at the scene.
“One section of [the] building had, from my understanding, about 500 to 1,000 wooden skids in it, which just fuelled that fire for most of the night.”
Fifty firefighters from five fire departments were needed to battle the fire, and six tanker trucks were used to haul water to the rural area.
The owners of the farm are planning to rebuild, despite suffering millions of dollars in damage to a fire.
Damage is estimated at more than $3 million. That number could change because of the vast amount of equipment that was inside the building. No one was injured and the cause isn’t considered suspicious.
Owner Andrew Tupling says despite the devastation, five buildings were unscathed by the fire.
“We are very lucky the wind was in the proper direction blowing away from the storage facilities and our main loss today was the packaging operation.
“It’s going to be painful in the short term, but in the long term, we are going to rebuild because we are committed to what we do.”
Source: CTV News and City News
