Community rallies behind Amish to restore barn after devastating fire

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - The Middlebury community has rallied behind one of their own after a fire destroyed a calf barn nearly two weeks ago.

Back on August 5th, 16 News Now was on the scene as the Amish calf barn was up in flames.

Middlebury Fire crews were able to get the blaze under control in 30 minutes, but sadly 241 of the 270 calves on the property died in fire.

While the sadness of the event still lingers, there’s also a sign of a hope.

The rubble has been cleared and the new barn is already standing.

The project manager says construction began on Saturday and will wrap tomorrow, just one week later.

He also says over 30 people have been working around the clock on the barn since they started construction on Saturday.

Fire officials say the cause of the fire was an unsupervised fuel tank that overflowed.

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