Fire Destroys Beef Complex on South Dakota State Fairgrounds

Saturday morning I was checking my Facebook feed and Riley Zoss had shared the news of a story from Huron, South Dakota. The Beef Complex on the South Dakota State Fairgrounds was destroyed by fire.

The fire couldn't have come at a worse time. Numerous barrel racers were in town for the SDBRA finals. Emily Lee was there competing and was one of the first people on the scene. She said on her Facebook page;

"This is not how we wanted to start the weekend. We were north of the barn so the smoke was coming directly at us! We thought our trailer was on fire until i opened the door and couldn’t breathe. Ran to the horses and you couldn’t see 2 in in front of you. Ran back to the truck drove to the other side and the fire department just showed up. After that it was banging on doors waking everyone up and in 10 min i think everyone had their horses out and everyone was safe!! Prayers to the firefighters. Sona Kott  and her crew, and to everyone in Huron that lost a huge part of their town! Our fun weekend was ruined but no one got hurt!!!"

Emily Lee went on to tell me in a Facebook message;

"The horses were in the hippodrome and there were stalls just north of that as well where there were horses!! Yes the hippodrome is across the street! Our trailer was directly north of the stalls and we smelt the fire and ran to the horses and met a police officer and figured out where the actual fire was, after that we went banging on doors!"

This is definitely one of those stories that could have ended much worse than it did. Emily added, we barrel racers stick together and everyone was helping each other out!

Thanks to Emily for sharing the pictures with us here, and thank you for sharing this story with your horse-loving, barrel racing friends!