Rural Sycamore barn fire results in total loss, authorities hail neighbor for alerting crews to the area

SYCAMORE – A barn was destroyed in a structure fire in rural Sycamore Wednesday, according to the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office.

The barn fire occurred in the 12900 block of Whipple Road in Sycamore just after 2 a.m. Wednesday, sheriff’s officials said.

A neighbor of the Sycamore resident who’s property was affected called 911 to report a structure fire at 2:09 a.m. Deputy Sheriff James Burgh said eight minutes later, the barn “was fully engulfed” in flames. County fire officials deemed the barn a total loss, according to the sheriff’s office.

No individuals or farm animals were injured in the fire, but lawnmowers and antiques stored in the barn suffered varying degrees of damage.

The barn’s owner was alerted to the fire by a neighbor.

Burgh said he think’s good samaritan actions like the neighbor alerting officials and the homeowner to the late night fire “is extremely important” to community safety.

“Whether it’s something at your house that doesn’t look right, I think it’s great that neighbors would say ‘Hey, I don’t know if this is wrong but something’s out of line here, so could you check it out?’” Burgh said. “So yeah, I think it’s extremely important to have good neighbors that they look out for each other.”

The cause of the fire remains unknown. Burgh said Wednesday he’d been told there was no reason to suspect the fire was anything more than an accident.

A state fire marshal has been contacted to work alongside the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office towards determining a cause of the fire, however.

“We’ll just try and figure out what happened so if it turns out an accident or electrical or something like that then we’ll close the case out but we want to make sure it was nothing suspicious,” Burgh said. “But at this point nothing appears suspicious.”

While the fire occurred in rural Sycamore, the incident response fell under jurisdiction of t he Genoa-Kingston Fire District,

Although the fire occurred at a property that has a Sycamore address, incident response went to the Genoa-Kingston Fire District, giving that department primary command of the scene. Burgh said the Genoa-Kingston Fire Department was assisted at the scene by the Sycamore, Boone County, Hampshire, Burlington and Huntley fire departments.

Because the fire occurred in a rural area without fire hydrants, Sycamore Fire Department crews used its engine No. 4 when the department was called in to assist in extinguishing the fire.

Put into service 11 months ago, Engine No. 4 has been designated Sycamore Fire Department’s main truck for rural structure fires because it has the ability to hold hold larger amounts of water than most fire engines – a strength that becomes apparent when combating rural fires away from large sources of water.

Crews at the barn fire conducted what’s known as a drafting operation – with Sycamore crews working with other firefighters to gather water at a fire hydrant, bringing it to the scene and dumping it into the engine’s 5,500-gallon portable water tank.