Seedway Fire Sends Up Black Pillar of Smoke

About four hours after a giant black pillar of smoke caught the attention of the region's residents Wednesday, firefighters were able to declare a blaze at The Seedway Inc. in Upper Milford Township under control. 

The fire, which according to published reports began as a trash fire, eventually grew to a six-alarm blaze that required the efforts of 19 fire companies from Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks and Montgomery counties to knock it back. 

The call about the fire on the farm property in the 5900 block of Vera Cruz Road came in to the Lehigh County Communications Center just before noon. 

At that same time, Patch received numerous texts and emails from readers wondering about the cause of a column of thick, dark smoke. One Patch reader speculated in the comments on an earlier article about the fire that its cause had to be petroleum-based because of the blackness of the smoke.

Later, Upper Milford Township Manager Dan DeLong and others confirmed that the Patch commenter had indeed been correct, as the blaze quickly spread from its starting point to plastic barrels owned by Seedway, destroying almost all of the barrels before it was contained at about 2 p.m.

Soon after the fire began, East Penn School Board President Charles Ballard emailed Patch a picture of the fire taken with his cell phone that shows flames and a dark black column of smoke. 

In the early afternoon, Lindsey Parks, executive director of The Seed Farm, said that water from a pond at The Seed Farm -- located across the street from Seedway -- was being pumped across Vera Cruz Road to help battle the blaze. 

Vera Cruz Road was closed between Main Road E/W and Church View Road for much of the day while firefighters and later fire investigators and investigators from the state Department of Environmental Protection worked, according to DeLong.

DeLong said no one was injured in the fire. 

Founded in 1963, Seedway provides farm and turf seed in the United States and Canada. It is headquartered in Hall, NY, according to the company website, and operates in two other Pennsyvania locations -- Mifflinburg and Elizabethtown -- as well as in Vermont, New York and Florida.