Robert Alexander, left, farm manager, pauses before Hayworth, a bull, is taken away following a barn fire at Riegel Farm in University Park on Friday. (Matthew Grotto|SouthtownStar)
For the better part of 37 years, Robert Alexander walked into a barn full of animals at Riegel Farm each morning and said hello to the many personalities that brightened his day.
There was Edgar Allen Crow, the talking bird, greeting the 63-year-old farm manager with a long hello. Yoda, the aging, arthritic goat, stirred, and Maggie, the veteran 29-year-old Morgan horse, stamped her hooves and clamored for her caretaker’s attention.
“Be patient,” he’d tell them. “I can’t do it all at once.”
And while some of the memories during the past three-plus decades may have blended together, Alexander likely won’t forget the early hours of Friday, when he was awoken about 1:30 a.m. by a phone call.
“The barn’s on fire!” the caller said. “The barn is on fire!”
Within hours, upward of 30 animals would die in the overnight blaze at Riegel Farm, a public petting zoo and barnyard facility run by the village of University Park.
Killed in the fire were two goats, two horses, a bull, a cow, rabbits and more than a dozen chickens.
Firefighters rescued a mix of about a dozen llamas, chickens and rabbits.
“Everything else died,” Alexander said.
Fire crews still are working to determine what caused flames to erupt in the roof of the animal barn, which village officials said was constructed in 2000. Damage estimates were not available.
The original barn was erected in 1924 by the Riegel family and sold to landowner Louis Manilow, who later turned it over to the village after its incorporation in the 1960s.
Though a subdivision would sprout around it in the coming decades, the barn – and the addition that housed the animals – have remained open to field trips, church groups and family reunions.
“All the animals had names. The children named them,” said Saundra Nunn, former director of the village’s Parks and Recreation Department that oversees the barn.
Nunn, 61, happened to be in town from Arkansas when she got the call about the fire.
She joined the facility’s small staff at the barn Friday afternoon, many of whom said they still were in shock as the lifeless animals were hauled away in trucks and trailers.
“I couldn’t watch that long,” she said. “I had to go away.”
Outside the barn, part of the roof had collapsed, and a large, charred chunk of the metal siding swayed in the afternoon breeze.
Inside, the smell of smoke lingered among the empty pens and cages, which once housed about 50 animals.
Robert Graham, the village’s current parks director, said Friday’s fire would be a major setback for expansion plans at the Riegel Farm Complex, 580 Farmview Road.
The crew’s first priority will be repairing fire damage, and Graham said several people already had inquired about donating money or animals.
“The next step is getting our animal friends back,” said Alexander, the caretaker.
A donation program should be announced shortly.
