PRESQUE ISLE – A local farm supply company lost approximately 500 bushels of oats in a fire Tuesday morning at a Fort Road granary.

Approximately 20 Presque Isle firefighters and four emergency vehicles responded to the Maine Potato Growers Inc. facility at 8 a.m. after receiving a call that a 30-year-old grain dryer had caught fire.

“The fire wasn’t very big, but it was hard to get at because it was inside the drum,” Deputy Chief Gerald Cousins of the Presque Isle Fire Department said Tuesday.

The stand-alone dryer is approximately 12 feet high and 15 feet long. Officials said the fire was contained in the dryer.

The deputy chief said firefighters didn’t have to dismantle the machine to get at the flames. Instead, they were able to spray foam and water from several hose lines into the drum.

Firefighters had the blaze under control within 30 minutes.

Ray Kilcollins, grain department manager, said MPG officials were investigating the cause of the fire.

“We don’t know the level of damage to the dryer at this point, but the fire burned all the wiring,” Kilcollins said Tuesday. “We won’t know if the dryer is damaged beyond repair until we get into it.”

He said damage estimates to the dryer and grain had not been confirmed.

Kilcollins said the oats inside the dryer didn’t burn, but were ruined by the fire and foam.

The dryer, which runs on propane gas, was operating at the time it caught fire, Kilcollins said.

“Something evidently malfunctioned. The dryer didn’t perform the way it was supposed to,” he said.