Better Pork - December 2007

Cover Story

CATASTROPHIC BARN FIRES:
Is the National Farm Building Code the culprit?

Some experts say ‘Yes’ and are calling for substantial changes to the code, including mandatory wall-to-ceiling firewalls in hog barns

by MARY BAXTER

Old habits can die hard and no one knows this better than Colleen Wiendels.

Often, before getting into bed at night, she’ll glance down the road from the home she shares with her husband Nick and three daughters near Poplar Hill, just north of London, to check for the yard light on their barn. She does this, even though it’s more than a year since the light was in operation.

It disappeared for good early in the morning on May 2, 2006, when the barn where the Wiendels finished hogs was destroyed by fire. All of the 1,000 animals in the barn died. The heat was so intense that it crumbled concrete and melted the Styrofoam sandwiched between the barn’s concrete room dividers.

For the Wiendels, it was one of the worst sorts of déjà-vu imaginable. Fourteen months earlier a similar disaster occurred at the same location. That time, the fire destroyed 1,400 pigs.

Talk to anyone in the industry and there’s a general impression that hog barn fires are on the rise. Statistics compiled by the insurance industry document 69 hog barn fires from 2000 to 2006 with cumulative losses being more than $33.5 million. Dairy is next in line for that time period with 65 fires and cumulative losses of more than $27 million. Those statistics are only a start say those who have been involved in researching them. Randy Drysdale manages loss control services for Cambridge-based Farm Mutual Reinsurance Plan Inc., which in turn helps to insure the larger policies taken out with the smaller mutual insurance companies which own it. He says that the plan’s records show that from January 1, 2006, to October 4, 2007, there were 15 hog barn fires across Canada with losses exceeding $2 million.

There have been plenty of other, smaller barn fires during that same time period, he says. “We hear that all the time.”

In Manitoba, Drysdale says, concerns about such fires have, in some measure, helped to fuel the provincial government’s decision to place a temporary moratorium on building or expanding swine barns while it examines how best to introduce firewall guidelines into its farm building code. Here in Ontario, a similar movement is afoot, spurred by the efforts of a group mostly comprised of Middlesex firefighters.

A spate of barn fires in the area is what galvanized the group, says John Elston, fire chief of the Township of Middlesex Centre and one of the group’s members. Since 2004, there have been nine hog barn fires in Middlesex County and its neighbouring counties of Oxford, Lambton, Huron, Elgin and Chatham-Kent.

The day before the Wiendels’ second fire, a conflagration broke out at another farm on the county’s east side. Two months later, another fire broke out in a barn in nearby Township of Lucan Biddulph. That one resulted in a loss of about 6,000 animals and $4 million in buildings and equipment.

It wasn’t just the frequency of the fires that caused concern, says Elston. It was the rapidity with which they spread, and it was the speed which caused the damage and dramatic livestock loss. “We’re not just talking tens of thousands,” he says of the cumulative livestock loss. “We’re talking millions.”

In many instances, the fires burned so intensely that there was not enough left behind to determine a cause. But the firefighters had their suspicions. These mostly centred on build-ups of methane, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia and their corrosive effects on electrical equipment, says Elston. Add into the mix the minimum requirements for fire separation in the attic (a separation whose integrity may have been breached in the course of routine maintenance and never repaired), and you have an extremely combustive environment with few measures to stop the fire’s spread.

Alarm failure
Colleen Wiendels still can’t get over how quickly the second fire spread at their barn. The barn was hooked up to an alarm system that was set to notify them by telephone five minutes after a problem had been detected.

“It didn’t even phone,” she says, pointing out that the monitoring equipment had likely been destroyed by the fast-moving fire.

Brenda Jackson, whose Elgin County hog breeding operation was devastated by a fire in August, was equally amazed at the speed with which the blaze broke out. The night it happened she remembers going to bed at midnight. When she woke a mere one hour and 15 minutes later, 27,000 square feet of barn “was gone,” she says. “There was nothing left.”

No matter what the cause might be, all of those in the group agree that the current approach to hog barn construction is what’s making the fire losses so dramatic. “It all comes down to the (Ontario) Building Code,” says Stephen Guay, a fire prevention officer with Middlesex County and another group member.

According to fellow member Jim McConnell, Middlesex Centre’s chief building official, the problem lies in the lack of design specifics for hog barns. As is the case for most buildings in the province, the construction of farm buildings must comply with Ontario Building Code regulations.

While the code does outline some structural regulations for these types of buildings, it defers mostly to the National Farm Building Code of Canada, published by the National Research Council of Canada. Yet the national code hasn’t been updated since 1995. Since then, hog barns have expanded significantly in size, averaging between 90,000 and 100,000 square feet today, says McConnell. Trends in construction have also changed, he says, with many of these barns now having slat floors and manure pits beneath. 

That’s why the Middlesex group would like to see building code regulations requiring firewalls that extend from the ground to the roof or even beyond. In the context of a $4 million building budget, McConnell suggests, $50,000 is a small price to pay to introduce the safety these walls would represent.

Elston agrees. Cutting a barn into zones, he believes, “better enhances the opportunity to reduce the fire losses and even human and animal life.”

So far, the group has presented its message to local insurance companies, reinsurers and design engineers with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). Key to their awareness campaign is a video of the Lucan Biddulph barn fire shot by one of the members, Dave Goddard, manager of Middlesex County's emergency services. The video provides a first-hand documentation of the challenges facing firefighters in a barn fire, the group says.

In turn, OMAFRA has formed a round table to look at the matter, not only for hog barns but also for all livestock barns. The 12-member committee met for the first time last June and includes representation from OMAFRA engineers, the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshall, the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, the province’s insurance industry and the Canadian Farm Builders Association.

McConnell, a committee member, says that there were plans for the committee to meet again this fall to review draft recommendations. Along with proposing changes to fire stops and fire separations, the recommendations address the addition of access routes around barns, animal and human welfare in the buildings, ventilation improvements and fire fighting sources of water, he says.

Higher insurance rates
While firefighters like the idea of wall-to-ceiling firewalls, producers are skeptical. Henry Aukema, chair of the Middlesex Pork Producers Association, says that they would be too expensive for the average producer. Brenda Jackson agrees, noting that estimates to add these sorts of walls into the rebuild of her barn have added around $30,000.

Aukema also suggests that perhaps the insurance industry should drive the changes by offering incentives for firewalls. Insurers, however, say such an approach isn’t going to happen. “The change has to come through the (National Farm) Building Code,” Drysdale says. If someone did take these precautions, he adds, “I would think any insurance company would look at that and see it as a preferred risk.”

Nancy Preston, general manager of Middlesex Mutual Insurance Company, agrees, noting that taking such precautions may simply help to “maintain the (premium) rate levels that we have.” In fact, she says, because of the losses within the swine industry over the past five years, which exceed those of other farm operations, the company raised its rates this October on hog barns by 15 per cent. That translates into an extra $150 a year for those who might have their barns insured for $300,000, she says.

Raising rates isn’t the only way the company is addressing the increase in fires. It has held an information session for policyholders and turned to its reinsurer, the Farm Mutual Reinsurance Plan, to raise awareness about preventive measures.

Farm Mutual also introduced a loss control services program three years ago. Offered free to policyholders, the program helps to “find the problems and stop them before they become serious or fires,” says Drysdale. The program uses thermal imaging cameras to identify electrical problems.

Drysdale says that the hog barn fire phenomenon is connected to newer barns which are more tightly constructed than their predecessors and lack air infiltration, allowing moisture and humidity to build. Combined with gases, it can cause deterioration in a barn’s electrical and mechanical components “very, very quickly,” he says. There have been instances when the thermal cameras have found electrical temperatures of 80-90 C and higher in two-year-old barns.

Electrical problems are the leading cause of fires, Drysdale says, but methane explosions are a growing trend. In the past year, there have been four such explosions, all in pit-ventilated barns. The problem has to do with the way the barns operate, he explains. After a barn is emptied, producers may try to save costs by reducing the heat and turning off fans. Without ventilation, methane builds. When heat returns, an explosion can be the result if there’s an open spark.

“Most barns have open-flame box heaters on the inside,” Drysdale says. “If you think about it, it’s like putting an open flame on top of a sewage treatment plant.”

Yet Yves Choinière, a Quebec-based engineer who is the only one in the two provinces to have studied methane explosions in detail, cautions producers about being overly concerned about methane explosions. “It takes a very, very specific situation” that includes specific weather conditions to produce such an explosion, he emphasizes.

Be prepared
The Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC) is also responding to the rising incidence of these fires. This month, it released a fact sheet on how to deal with the aftermath of a pig barn fire. The sheet is available on the council’s website at www.ofac.org and is the third in a series of fact sheets (the other two address fire prevention tips for producers and how to cope with livestock transport emergencies for emergency personnel). The sheet provides information on how to deal with both live and dead animals after a fire.

Crystal Mackay, OFAC’s executive director, says that the goal of the sheet is to help people with practical information about who to call and where to get help. “We thought it would be valuable to put together for people before they need them,” she says. “Of course, the real goal is to read it and hope you never have to use the information.”
After her own experiences, Brenda Jackson is convinced that hog producers need such information and should prepare for the possibility of fire. Had she been prepared, dealing with the aftermath may have been easier, she says, noting that she not only had to deal with dead animals but also 80 survivors.

Jackson urges producers to develop a fire plan that, among other things, identifies an on-farm disposal location, outlines how to deal with any surviving animals and ensures that the local fire department is familiar with the layout of the property.