South Corbin barn consumed by fire

A portion of Highway 26 in south Corbin was shut down for nearly an hour last Wednesday while fire crews surrounded property owned by Pennington Farms as a barn housing numerous pieces of equipment and hay burned to the ground.

One of the barn’s owners, Bill Pennington, said his son Tyler was inside the barn when the fire started, but was able to get out of the structure without injury. Pennington said his son attempted to fight the blaze, but was unsuccessful.

Pennington also said that the three tractors, two hay rakes and one bailer were lost in the fire, but he made no estimation as to a monetary amount of losses due to the fire.

"There were several things in there that were not insured, so we are unsure right now," Pennington said.

Firefighters were unable to get to the structure, thanks to exploding propane tanks and the spreading of the fire. They did manage to put out hot spots in the surrounding field as they watched the barn being leveled by fire.

Though previous reports state that the fire may have originated in the hayloft as the moist hay may have taken on heat, Pennington said he was not 100 percent sure of that.

"We have put hay up like that before and it hasn’t happened," he said. "If that was the case, we probably wouldn’t have put it up then, so we aren’t sure what the cause is yet."