Barn fire kills several hundred pigs

Published 10:00 am Monday, April 5, 2010

A hog barn fire Friday in LeRoy destroyed a building and killed several hundred pigs.

No people were reported injured in the blaze.

The fire started sometime around 5:30 p.m. at 70587 110th St., according to a sheriff’s department report. Adams, Stacyville, Iowa, and LeRoy firefighters responded and extinguished the flames by around 9:30 p.m.

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The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

The barn’s owner, 41-year-old Ronald Kenneth Gilgenbach, told authorities he was at the property earlier in the day but was not there at the time of the fire. Gilgenbach’s home address is in Taopi.

According to the report, the property had two barns, one of which was not damaged by the fire. In the barn that did catch fire, Gilgenbach reported that there were roughly 4,000 hogs, many of which were saved.

Counting both livestock and building costs, the estimated damage of the fire was more than $400,000, the report states.