LEARY, GA (WALB) -
It's believed a dryer vent may sparked an overnight fire that destroyed thousands of pounds of pecans at a Calhoun County pecan warehouse.
Flames were still smoldering Tuesday morning as tons upon tons of destroyed pecans were removed from South Georgia Pecan Cleaning Plant.
"We had probably 350,000 pounds in there," said plant manager Andy Dean.
That's 175 tons of pecans that Dean says were stored in bins.
"We're talking about $2 to $2.50 a pound for those nuts," he said.
They were in the drying process when it's believed one of the dryer vents caught fire.
It broke out around midnight and Calhoun County firefighters and responding volunteers battled the blaze throughout the early morning hours.
'It could have gotten in to the other building. It was a really hot fire," Dean said.
Luckily crews used a back hoe to tear the burning bins away from the warehouse to keep it from spreading. The loss destroyed half the operation.
"We've got another (plant), but it's going to be hard to run all of our product through one plant for the rest of the year," he said.
The company gets its pecans from 6 south Georgia growers and while some are bagged and ready and others still undergoing the cleaning process, this fire could impact jobs.
"They (employees) have concerns because we won't need everybody after this happened because we'll be running half the facility." said Dean.
Between the nuts and the equipment, the loss is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars but they're hopeful insurance will cover much of it.
Copyright 2012 WALB. All rights reserved.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 Worldnow and WALB, a Raycom Media Station. 
