Water heater likely cause of Mason Road barn fire
By Caitlyn Kelleher Journal Staff Reporter

Tammy Moison stands in her backyard looking at the water-heating unit that is believed to be the cause of the barn fire. Journal Photo/Caitlyn Kelleher

Tammy Moison doesn’t know why a nightmare woke her up early Monday morning but she is very glad it did because it probably saved her barn and her animals.

When she awoke the glow from a fire was shooting through the roof of the Moisons’ 41 Mason Road home.

“I really only saw the flames coming out of the roof,” she said standing less than 12 hours later in front of the same barn.

None one, including the animals, was hurt in the single-alarm fire. The fire damaged part of the barn after animals apparently knocked over a bucket of water and dislodged the water heater.

“It was very obvious what the cause was,” said Fire Chief William Seymour. “There were very obvious burn patterns to follow.”

The water heater is designed with a heating unit that sits in an animal’s water bucket and turns on when the water is freezing to prevent it from becoming ice. Moison said this is the first time she has bought a water heater — she added it is also her last.

“We used it for a couple of weeks with no issues,” she said. “It’s supposed to shut off when it’s not freezing and when it’s not in the water.”

Seymor said it appears one of the animals knocked the bucket over and then dragged the heater, which landed on hay in the barn.

Seymour said if farmers are using one of the water heaters they should make sure it is certified by Underwriter Laboratories and secured so it cannot be moved by the animals.

He said firefighters doused the blaze with tank water, and had set up a secondary line in case water needed to be pumped from the pond about 2,000 feet away.

“They wet down the whole barn,” Moison said. “They were very compassionate and they were very informative. … I was surprised at how accommodating they were for 2 o’clock in the morning.”

Seymour said the only difficulty for firefighters was trying to keep the animals out of the barn while fighting the fire. He said animals instinctively want to return to the barn “burning or not.”

Once all of the animals were out of the barn, the Moisons put the female goats into their dinning room to try to keep them out of the firefighters’ ways.

“They were more scared of the firemen then they were of the fire,” said Richard Moison, Tammy’s husband.

Richard went to the barn as his wife called 911 to try to save the animals. He was not expecting a positive outcome because of all of the flames he could see through the barn’s window.

“I figured all of the animals were dead because they weren’t making any noise,” he said.

But in fact two Romeny Sheep and eight Nigerian Dwarf Goats were huddled in a corner of the stall away from the flames.

“There are a million worse things that could have happened,” Tammy Moison said.