NORTH MANCHESTER — Employees at Hi-Grade Egg Producers near North Manchester are slowly picking up the pieces after  a fire last week, killed one million chickens and destroyed several buildings.

You can still smell smoke and burning debri on 114 near North Manchester even more than a week after the devestating fire at Hi-Grade Egg Producers.

One million chickens killed and 5 buildings reduced to ashes in the blaze that lasted nearly seven hours.

While the past week has been hectic, company president Bob Krause says things are looking up

“The industry has been great making sure we have enough eggs to keep our industry supplied,” Krause said.

This equates to 600,000 dozen eggs a week through the rest of the year. Krause says its a relief, especially since the holiday’s are approaching, which are a busy time for egg farmers.

Meanwhile workers are continiung to clean up the mess. Thursday they will start hauling out debri. Krause says the five poultry barns will have to be completely demolished due to concrete heat damage. But he hopes to rebuild them in the spring.

Officials still aren’t sure what caused the fire. Once that is determined, Krause says he will immediately start looking ahead to prevent something like this from happening agian.

Karuse says he hopes to recover from the fire, and be back at 100 percent by this time next year.

Source: WPAT