A cause is still unknown for two barn fires reported late Monday night and early Tuesday morning in Pettis County.
According to Pettis County Fire District Chief Mike Harding, PCFD received a call for mutual aid from the Smithton Fire Department at 11:48 p.m. Monday for a structure fire on Carpenter Road. Then at 3:10 a.m., a call came in for another structure fire, this time in Pettis County on Pony Path Road.
“At first we give mutual aid to Smithton Fire. Just with the two departments working together they got the fire pretty much under control, then with the last fire, the blaze was so large and with the wind, the fire actually jumped the road on Pony Path,” Harding said Tuesday evening. “It burned approximately five acres. It was scattered out quite a bit so we had a crew to battle the field fire and then crews attacking the structure call. It was quite a battle.”
Both structures were barns, said Pettis County Sheriff Kevin Bond, so no one was inside at the time of the fires. He said he believed one barn had some hay inside, while the other was empty. No injuries were reported during either fire.
The Missouri State Fire Marshal’s Office has been called by in PCFD to investigate the fires in cooperation with Pettis County Sheriff’s Office detectives.
“Both looked suspicious in nature,” Bond said of why PCFD chose to call in the Fire Marshal. “They were close in proximity and in time, but that’s not necessarily saying they’re related but with the circumstances we need to question the possibility if they are related.”
As of Tuesday evening, Harding said the two incidents were still under investigation.
