Firefighters battle blaze in vacant DC barn; smoke visible for miles

[mahatmakanejeeves]

DC has (or had) a barn? I was out by Merrifield at the time, too far away for me to have seen the smoke.

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Firefighters battle blaze in vacant DC barn; smoke visible for miles

Hugh Garbrick | [e-mail]
Alejandro Alvarez | aalvarez@wtоp.com

December 3, 2022, 6:19 PM



A large fire in a vacant Southeast D.C. barn sent plumes of smoke high into the air across the nation’s capital on Saturday afternoon.

D.C. Fire and EMS units were called to a vacant two-story structure on the campus of St. Elizabeths, a psychiatric hospital in Southeast, around 3:45 p.m. Saturday. Crews arrived to find much of the barn engulfed in flames. A towering column of smoke was visible from across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, before firefighters brought the fire under control.

{snip}

The destroyed barn resembles a cow barn seen in photos from the archives of the Library of Congress. The cow barn dates back to the 19th century, according to its archives. The archives note the barn’s address is 2700 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., where D.C. Fire and EMS reported Saturday night’s fire.

According to the Library of Congress, the cow barn was part of an agricultural-building complex that was built to accommodate the hospital’s 100 dairy cattle herd, necessary for the hospital’s dairy operations.

{snip}



A photo from the Library of Congress archives dating to the 19th century. The photo is of St. Elizabeths Hospital’s cow barn, an integral part of the hospital’s dairy operations.

As many as 100 firefighters responded to the fire. Anticipating a collapse, the fire department worked from the outside for several hours to quell the blaze and remained on the scene past nightfall, knocking down hot spots.

{snip}

Link to tweet

Hugh Garbrick
Hugh graduated from the University of Maryland’s journalism college in 2020. While studying, he interned at the Queen Anne & Magnolia News, a local paper in Seattle, and reported for the school’s Capital News Service. Hugh is a lifelong MoCo resident, and has listened to the local radio quite a bit.

[e-mail]

Alejandro Alvarez
Alejandro Alvarez joined WTOP as a digital journalist and editor in June 2018. He is a reporter and photographer focusing on politics, political activism and international affairs.

aalvarez@wtоp.com
@aletweetsnews

Wow.

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. One wonders what was in that barn that created smoke that intense or of that color.

[Chainfire]

2. I was thinking that that smoke looked like the smoke from burning hay field stubble.

Perhaps it was hay? When hay gets damp it can spontaneously combust.

[Ferrets are Cool]

3. You are probably correct.