LAWRENCE: Investigation under way in barn fire

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Investigators are attempting to determine the cause of a fire that destroyed a barn at the 194-acre Stony Brook Farm, which belongs to optometrist Bruce DiDonato, on Cold Soil Road Monday night.
    All that was left of the two-story barn were a few charred timbers, pieces of burnt paper and some twisted metal Tuesday morning. The lawn on the left side of the barn, where the fire apparently started, was scorched.
    Investigators from the Lawrence Township Fire Marshal’s Office, the Mercer County Fire Marshal’s Office and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office pored over the charred remains Monday night and returned Tuesday morning.
    A dog and three horses were pulled from the barn Monday night, according to Lawrenceville Fire Co. Fire Chief Raymond Nagy. There were no injuries to the approximately 60 firefighters who responded, he said.
    The fire in the red, two-story barn was reported to the Lawrence Township Police Department at 6:42 p.m., Chief Nagy said. There were “numerous” 911 calls from passersby, he said. The barn is set back several hundred feet from the road.
    Chief Nagy, who responded to the scene from his home in the Society Hill at Lawrenceville development, said that as he walked out of the front door of his home, he saw a column of heavy black smoke in the distance.
    “On my arrival, I saw heavy fire at the left corner of the building on both floors,” he said. “The fire had a good jump start on us by the time we got there. It was starting to encroach on the (farm manager’s) residence, which was about 50 feet away. It was an extremely hot fire.” 
    Firetrucks from the three Lawrence Township volunteer fire companies — the Lawrenceville Fire Co., the Lawrence Road Fire Co. and the Slackwood Volunteer Fire Co. — responded to the fire. 
    Water tanker trucks from fire companies in Mercer County and Bucks County, Pa., were dispatched to Cold Soil Road to provide a water supply, Chief Nagy said. A water tanker truck carries about 3,500 gallons of water.
    “The circumstances working against us were the immediate lack of water and the high wind,” Chief Nagy said. There are no fire hydrants on Cold Soil Road, and the barn is set back from the road in an open field.
    Chief Nagy said firefighting efforts also were hindered by the presence of two industrial-size  propane tanks next to the barn. The contents inside the tanks began to vent, producing two jets of flames that “greatly increased” the spread of fire in the barn, he said.
    The firefighters were pulled away from the barn, the fire chief said. While they were waiting for the propane tanks to finish venting, they hosed down a nearby carriage house and another, smaller shed to protect them from the fire.
    The contents of the barn also contributed to the fire’s spread, Chief Nagy said. The barn was packed with vehicles, chemicals such as paint thinner, papers, grain and hay — all of which are highly combustible.
    Chief Nagy said the fire was declared under control, which means the bulk of the fire had been knocked down, about an hour and 45 minutes after firefighters’ arrival. The fire was extinguished by around midnight. There were no visible flames by 12:30 a.m., he said.
    “For what we had and what we were dealt, things went pretty well,” Chief Nagy said. He praised the Mercer County Central Communications dispatchers, the Mercer County Fire Police (who took over traffic control duties from the Lawrence Township Police Department), Capital Health Services emergency medical technicians (who stood by) and the volunteer firefighters.