Myron MacQuarrie was woken up shortly after midnight on Feb. 1 by one of the tenants living at his house, located along the Route 2 highway in Winsloe.
They told him the barn housing his family-owned meat processing company, MacQuarrie Meats, was on fire.
"There was flames shooting out of the ceiling," MacQuarrie said.
The North River Fire Department received the emergency call at about 12:45 a.m. that same morning. They responded, and a temporary road closure was set up on the highway.
Fire chief Anson Grant said overall, there were about 60 firefighters on the scene from his station, as well as from the Charlottetown, North Shore and New Glasgow stations.
By the time he arrived, the barn was fully engulfed.
Some firefighters were already helping to remove MacQuarrie's cattle from his barn into his field. They went about this task as safely as possible.
"(But) the loft section was definitely on fire when they were trying to do this," Grant said.
Throughout the night, equipment such as hoses and nozzles were proving hard to work with because they were freezing up, he said.
"The frigid temperatures didn't help."
According to Grant, it took about seven hours to put out the fire. All emergency crew were gone by 8 a.m. Saturday morning.
While half of the barn's frame was still standing, nothing from inside it is salvageable, as the whole interior was scorched, including all the meat processing equipment.
"Everything's gone," MacQuarrie said.
Nobody was in the barn during the fire. None of MacQuarrie's cattle were harmed, but four goats died.
MacQuarrie has another shop nearby that he and his seven employees can operate out of for the time being. As of now, the cause of the fire is under investigation by the Fire Marshals Office, Grant said.
The aftermath of the MacQuarrie Meats barn fire will be felt heavily across P.E.I.
“It’s more than a barn fire,” said farmer Travis Cummiskey.
Cummiskey, owner of Glenlake Pasture Farm in Tarantum, said MacQuarrie Meats played a big role when he first started his business about four years ago.
“Having access to a processer is pretty important,” he said. “It means a lot to me and how I run my business.”
MacQuarrie’s specialized in beef and pork processing and had one of the largest meat lockers on P.E.I. Cummiskey would do his business there because they were often flexible with his schedule and could cater to his and his client’s special requests, he said.
With one less meat processer on the eastern side of the Island, farmers that depended on MacQuarrie’s will be scrambling to find an alternative.
“You’re going to have to book much further ahead,” Cummiskey said. “There’ll be quite a backlog.”
He had a booking to process two pigs at MacQuarrie’s on Monday, Feb. 3.
“(Now) I don’t know where I’m going to get them in,” he said. “And I know I’m not the only one.”
When he first heard what happened, he was shocked. He immediately made some calls to other meat processers, who told him their phones were already off the hook but would do everything they could.
