Two fires, 1 tragedy, same
cause – misused equipment
’96 fire at farm did
not kill any horses, but livestock lost this time
JERRY WOLKOWITZ Flames leap from a barn at Gaitway Farm, Route 33, Manalapan, as firefighters prepare to battle the blaze on Thanksgiving night, Nov. 23. Officials said 20 horses lost their lives in the fire.
In the early morning hours of March 14, 1996, disaster was averted at Gaitway Farm on Route 33 in Manalapan.
In the evening hours of Nov. 23, 2000, disaster struck the sprawling horse farm in the southern end of the municipality.
In both cases the cause was the same.
Monmouth County fire officials said Friday that a heating element used to warm water caused the spectacular Thanksgiving night blaze that claimed the lives of 20 horses in a barn on the Gaitway Farm property. The heating element had apparently been left unattended in the barn and burned through the plastic bucket in which it rested, fire officials said.
The result was a fire that began in a common interior walkway and ignited the hay, wood and other combustible elements inside the barn, according to Monmouth County Deputy Fire Marshal Richard Hogan.
Authorities have not identified the person responsible for leaving the heating element in the plastic bucket. County investigations are continuing, Hogan said.
Almost five years ago, the same type of heating element was the cause of a fire that began at about 3:40 a.m. March 14, 1996. In that case, however, no livestock was lost as farm manager Tim Hundertpfund and his wife, Jacki, were awakened in their home on the property and raced to Barn No. 11.
A March 20, 1996, article in the News Transcript quoted Jacki Hundertpfund saying, "We called 911, ran out of the house and over to the barn. When we got to the barn, which is rented by the DePinto stable and holds 30 standardbred horses, it was on fire. We ran inside, the barn was filled with smoke, and my husband grabbed a fire extinguisher and started to put out the fire. The horses were standing in their stalls, but it was so smoky in the barn that we could hardly see them. We started leading them outside, including one that had a broken leg."
Firefighters arrived in a matter of minutes and extinguished the fire that primarily damaged a wall in the barn.
Hogan, a Manalapan fire official then as he is today, was quoted in that 1996 News Transcript article as saying that fire was caused by a short circuit in a bucket warmer. The electric coil is used to heat water that is mixed with dry food to make warm mash for the horses.
On Sunday, Hogan confirmed that the "bucket warmer" he deemed responsible for the 1996 fire at Gaitway Farm was the same type of equipment that – because of its apparent improper use – caused last week’s fire. He noted as was the case on Thanksgiving night 2000, a plastic bucket was improperly used to hold the heating coil in the 1996 fire.
"The difference in these two fires," Hogan said Sunday, "was that in 1996 the fire in the barn was seen immediately. Last week’s fire was not seen immediately, and it was a very short period of time from when there was an open flame to when the barn went up."
The fire official said it is not the heating element itself that is the problem; rather, it is the improper use of the equipment – its placement in a plastic bucket instead of a metal bucket – that led to tragedy.