Fire in Santa Rosa High School ag barn threatened 42 pigs

Forty-two squealing pigs inside the Santa Rosa High School Ag Barn were saved by firefighters Thursday night after flames were spotted rising from the eaves.

The fire was called in at 9:09 p.m. by contractors working on the fiber-optic network at Ridgway High School across a football field from the barn, said Santa Rosa Fire Battalion Chief Ken Sebastiani. The barn is on Santa Rosa High School’s Mendocino Avenue campus.

Firefighters moved the pigs - some only a few months old - away from the flames within the barn, barricading them with bales of hay, Sebastiani said.

The fire was limited to hay, sawdust and shelving inside the barn and was put out in 11 minutes, he said. There was no structural damage.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but Sebastiani said there were heat lamps inside to keep the small animals warm.

Students from the high school’s Future Farmers of America program helped corral some of the loose pigs in the barn.