Daring rescue followed 1979 fire at Templeton Feed & Grain

Grain holds a special place in our culture.

The connections include prayers for our daily bread, patriotic songs describing amber waves, and sheafs of grain appearing as a graphic motif on currency and stamps.

When the Templeton Feed & Grain silos were engulfed in flames on the night of July 4, it was more than a building that was lost.

A grain elevator is usually the first skyscraper in a region, an economic and social beacon for a community.

It’s the centerpiece of the Templeton Community Services logo.

For many years Templeton Feed & Grain Co. was included in a newspaper advertisement from San Luis Obispo 4-H and FFA clubs thanking all the buyers at the Mid-State Fair’s Junior Livestock Auction.

Located between the old highway and the railroad tracks, the building commanded the skyline.

One story from the newspaper’s archives said it took two truckloads of nails to stitch together the 2-by-6 inch boards that made up the walls. Another had an unattributed claim that it was the largest set of silos west of the Mississippi, though there weren’t any extra details on the specifics to support the claim.

The blaze that broke out late on Independence Day was not the first serious fire to strike the site. After a fire in 1979, the owners feared that the building had been damaged beyond repair.

But then as today, the family was resilient and worked on ways to reshape the business in the aftermath.

When Templeton fire chief Lloyd Holloway retired in March 26, 1998, he recalled his career with the department.

Holloway told reporter Matt Lazier, “When I first joined, you went with whatever you had on and that’s what you fought the fire in. We didn’t have turnout gear or breathing apparatus. We used old military coats that weren’t even fire rated.”

He recalled firefighters standing on Main Street wearing blue jeans and no shirts.

The story of the fire ran Aug. 25, 1979.

Shirlee Jermin said the grain elevator and storage silos were built in 1952. Her husband Tom Jermin Sr. bought the feed business in 1946. (The family name is correct here, the 1979 story was in error.)

Various stories in the following days attributed the fire to a spark from an overhead auger in an adjacent metal building, or it could have been children playing with matches.

At first it was uncertain if the granary would survive, but it was repaired and the icon would tower over Templeton for another 46 before falling to another, more devastating fire.

A year later, one of the carpenters doing repair work survived a near-tragedy, too. An unfortunate accident would again call firefighters to the building for a difficult rescue.

Glenn Scott wrote this story from June 3, 1980.

Lucky man plucked off mill scaffold

For Paso Robles carpenter Barry McFarland, Monday was one of those days when even things as trustworthy as the law of gravity seemed against him.

McFarland, 26, was working in the rafters of the towering Templeton Feed & Grain mill about 11:30 a.m. when a wooden L-shaped device called a gin pole, used to hoist construction materials, snapped under too much weight and hit him in the head.

He was working for Jacobson and Sons Construction Co. of Bismark, North Dakota, and was repairing damage from a fire last August in the granary.

The next thing he knew, he said, he was lying on plywood scaffolding, his head cut and his right arm fractured and throbbing.

William Miller, superintendent of the Templeton Fire District, said McFarland was lucky he fell on the scaffolding. He could have plunged down a bin some 80 feet to an asphalt floor, he said.

The only safe way down from the rafters was a small ladder, and rescuers from the fire district, the state Department of Forestry and an ambulance service decided a less risky rescue would be to strap McFarland in a gurney and lower him out a window and down a ladder truck.

The rescuers didn’t have a ladder truck, though, so they called San Luis Obispo’s Fire Department to drive one up. Captain Steve Overbey said once the truck reached the mill and stretched its ladder to the window, “we had about 2 feet to spare.”

Even though the ladder only needed to come back down — something the gin pole had done voluntarily — the motor for the ladder wouldn’t start. McFarland lay in the gurney 80 feet above.

“All I wanted to do was get down,” said the victim. “My arm hurt like hell, and I wanted a pain pill or something.”

So rescuers finally ran a rope over the ladder and lowered the basket down by hand about 12:50 p.m. The motor finally started and the ladder was lowered about an hour later, said Miller.

McFarland was listed in good condition this morning in Twin Cities Community Hospital in Templeton. Ten stitches closed the cuts in his head.

David Middlecamp

The Tribune

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David Middlecamp is a photojournalist and third-generation Cal Poly graduate who has covered the Central Coast region since the 1980s. A career that began developing and printing black-and-white film now includes an FAA-certified drone pilot license. He also writes the history column “Photos from the Vault.”