He sees his 800 sows and their babies perish in a fire

Photo Agence QMI, Pascal Girard
The intensity of the blaze was such that you could see the flames several miles round. The building would be a total loss.

Antoine Lacroix

Sunday, 27 August, 2017 23:11

UPDATE
Sunday, 27 August, 2017 23:53

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A producer porcine St-Roch-de-l’achigan is distraught after a violent fire that claimed the lives of 800 sows and hundreds of piglets on Saturday night. Its activities will be heavily affected and the damage is valued at close to $2 million.

Saturday, around 20: 15 p.m., a fire broke out at the centre of the building, which housed more than a thousand of the beasts, on route 341, in the Lanaudière region. The blaze would probably be of electrical origin. The intensity was such that you could see the flames several miles round.

“It caught fire very quickly and there was nothing more to do. […] It was well looked after. There had been several inspections and it was safe. But we are not immune to bad luck, ” said Mr. Henri.

He admits to having wanted to enter to save the most animals possible, but it was already too late.

“The exterior siding is vinyl and the smoke is very toxic. It would have been too dangerous. At least, the animals have not suffered because of the flames, thanks to this, ” he says.

One hundred firefighters from surrounding municipalities have been required to fight the fire. They used an excavator to knock down the agricultural building, and to facilitate the work of the sappers.

After several hours of fighting, they finally managed to subdue the blaze.

Photo Antoine Lacroix

Carcasses

At the time of the passage of the Newspaper, Sunday, Daniel Henry was in the process of instructing a claims adjuster so that it can remove animal carcasses from the rubble.

“It’s going to have to pick them up as soon as possible so that it does not become a charnel house. It’s going to be tedious work, laments the farmer. We should spend the day on it. “

The production of hogs to Mr. Henry will be very much affected by the fire. However, its main activities are related to a mill where it transforms cereals, feed for animals, on the same site as the maternity swine.

“This is my second sector in importance, almost to equality with the mill. Just in this maternity, this is the third of my production of pigs that is there is 18 000 piglets annually. They will have to do many steps to fine tune it, otherwise I’m going to miss it “, he explains.

The barn saved

The man, who was insured, hope to be able to rebuild as quickly as possible.

“The fire is too recent to be able to give a time limit. Saturday, I had a maternity functional and there, of a sudden, she is no longer there. It’s going to be a long process, ” he says.

The only balm on the heart of Daniel Henri is that the chicken coop of 20 000 poultry, a few meters from the maternity swine, was able to be saved.

“They [the firefighters] have focused their intervention to prevent the spread. This is the only good news in all of this, ” said Mr. Henri.