Gary Davis planned to take his tobacco out of one of his barns today.
But those plans — along with $5,000 worth of his crop and the barn that contained it — went up in smoke after a fire broke out at the barn around 10:30 a.m. Friday.
Gary’s wife, Gracie, learned of the fire from a farm worker and immediately called 911.
“I called 911 on one phone and I called (Gary) on my cell phone,” Gracie Davis said. “He said ‘Call 911’ and I said ‘I did — I’m on the phone with them now.’ ”
Sandy Bottom Volunteer Fire Department responded to the call, assisted by fire crews from Deep Run and Southwood, along with Lenoir County EMS.
The barn, at the end of a row behind the Davis house, sent thick plumes of yellow smoke into the sky as firefighters doused the blaze and extracted racks of burned tobacco from the structure.
“When I saw it was the one at the end, I said, ‘Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord it’s the one on the end,’” Gracie Davis said. “Because if it had been one in the middle, it probably would have gone on to others and caught fire.”
The barn itself, Gary Davis said, was worth $8,000-$10,000.
“It was 160 degrees in there, because I checked it early this morning,” Gary Davis said Friday at the scene. “I was hoping I could cut it out this morning, so I could take it out tomorrow. But it would have been later on today before I could have cut it off. For the electricity and gas that it burnt, and the labor put in, that’s another thousand, $1,500.”
The nature of the curing process contains some amount of fire risk since heat and a plant intended to burn are at the center of it, but there are measures taken to make sure that’s a small possibility. A barn fire at the Davis farm hadn’t occurred since 1995.
“We had one burn about 18 years ago,” Gracie Davis said. “When I was pregnant with my daughter, we had a barn burn, but we haven’t had one since.”
Gary Davis said he believes the fire started at the back of the barn by its burner.
Wes Wolfecan be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.