Mount Pleasant Stockyards sustains damaging blaze

By DAVY MOSELEY | East Texas Edition

May 23, 2002 -- Mount Pleasant Stockyards suffered a damaging fire Friday night, May 17, to several on-site structures.

"To tell you the truth, I just don't know what I'm going to do yet. I'm still more or less in shock," said salebarn owner Tom Cody Monday morning, May 20.

According to Cody, no livestock were injured in the 11:45 p.m. blaze. Most of the damage was to the office and restaurant buildings, while the livestock barns sustained little or no damage.

"Right now the investigators are working hard trying to figure out what happened. Then the insurance adjusters will come through," Cody said. "At the very least it will be several weeks before we are running again."

A chief concern of Cody's is that his regular buyers and sellers, the life-blood of any livestock auction, will be going elsewhere to do business while Mount Pleasant Stockyards is being rebuilt.

Mount Pleasant Stockyards is one of the few sale barns in the area whose regular weekly sale is held on Tuesdays.

According to a report by the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune, Cody said he thought the call alerting him to the fire, "was someone's idea of a bad joke until I got here and saw all the lights and trucks." The state fire marshal will be called in to look at the damage, according to Mount Pleasant Fire Department Captain Danny Beard.