The Tracy Fire Department was called back out to Meadowland Farmers Cooperative last week.
Meadowland General Manager Mike Trosen said the metal transitions where the corn flows from the flat grain storage facility to the conveyor got hot, and the corn got hot over five of the transitions. He said the Walnut Grove and Tracy fire departments sprayed water on the corn to cool it down.
“This was done from the tunnel under the building,” said Trosen. “They have had to do that a few times, including this weekend. One hot spot was removed this weekend with about 4,000 bushels of hot corn screened and piled on site. The majority of the corn is good quality and going to market.”
As of Monday, about 900,000 bushels of corn had been removed from the building, which had 4 million bushels in it at the time of the original fire. The majority of the corn has been good quality and has been delivered on contract to Highwater Ethanol.
“There was a rumor that we had to sell corn to get the building empty,” Meadowland General Manager Mike Trosen said. “This is false, as the corn is going on contracts that were sold for this time frame, whether we had had the fire or not.”
Trosen said Highwater has helped us by extending its hours a couple of days to allow Meadowland to get more corn hauled.
On Sunday, January 13, eight fire departments from four counties were called to battle a fire that started in a conveyor tunnel underneath the flat grain storage facility at Meadowland, which is located just east of Walnut Grove.
The flat grain facility is 500 feet in length, and the tunnel is 600 feet long. It held about 4 million bushels of corn at the time of the fire.