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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • AUGUST 2018 Fire damage won’t delay blueberry shipments by RONDA PAYNE


LANGLEY – An intense fire in the early morning hours of June 24 won’t derail shipments of fresh blueberries from Driediger Farms Ltd. in Langley. An electrical panel in the middle portion


of the fresh pack building in north Langley may be the source of a blaze that caused about $2 million in damage. The cause is under investigation. “We don’t know,” says owner Rhonda Driediger of the fire’s origin. “We just don’t know what started it.” Cameras within the plant clicked on at 3:06 am and caught the blaze in action but it was 90 minutes before a worker who lives on site noticed it and alerted Driediger. Fire crews arrived at about 5 am. The fire occurred approximately two


weeks prior to harvest, so Driediger has been able to get the building back in operation to pack fresh blueberries, which began arriving July 5. Had the blaze happened later in the year, Driediger may not have been able to pack fruit. “We’re already back running today,” she said on July 10. “There was a lot of restoration work that was done really quickly. We’ll operate in that building until the end of season and then we’ll have to finish doing the repairs in the off-season.” Driediger says the berries received to date have been in good shape. “The quality has been really good,” she says.


While the losses in the short term aren’t as high as they could have been, the biggest costs will come with restoring the building this fall. “It’s going to be the restoration and the


repair work [that costs] because all the walls have to come down, like the inside walls. Insulation has to be replaced and stuff like that,” she explains. “It could have been worse; it could have been another $1 million just in equipment. I mean, $2 million sounds like a lot. It could be upwards of that, but we’ve restored it so that we can operate, which has a cost associated with it, and then we’re going to have to take all that out and finish the building off.” Recovery has been aided by the regular


safety audits developed by the Safe Quality Food Institute that Driediger Farms undertakes. The audits require that packing plants develop emergency plans to deal with incidents. The emergency plan allowed Driediger


Rhonda Driediger, left, says it’s business pretty much as usual after fire ripped through Driediger Farm’s blueberry packing plant in June. SEAN HITREC PHOTO


predicting a decent, “but not overwhelming” crop of about 150 to 160 million pounds. The fresh pack building sustained fire and water


“There are some size variations within the first crop. We’ll see how that pans out overall.” The ups and downs of the spring and early summer weather may be a cause for the size variations but did not impact overall berry quality. Driediger notes the BC Blueberry Council is


damage. To get the building up and running, debris and equipment was cleared, then the building was power-washed and sanitized. Checks made sure equipment was in working order. Ultimately, just a few pieces of equipment were written off. “We’ve managed to salvage almost all of our equipment,” says Driediger. “My tray formers that make the boxes, they were both burned.”


Farms to quickly contact its insurer as well as vendors of equipment, limiting downtime. By the time insurance adjusters finished their work, new equipment was waiting to be installed. “It was all done within the first 24 to 48


hours,” she says.


Given that the fire’s cause remains unknown, the insurance company is also inspecting the rest of the property to identify any potential problems that could cause future downtime and expense. “We’ve asked … our insurance company to bring one of their safety officers in and go through our other buildings just to make sure that if there’s anything we’re missing that we can get it fixed now,” says Driediger. “We certainly don’t want to [do other repairs] after [restoration work is complete].”


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