ELKIN — A early morning blaze destroyed a chicken house Thursday, but firefighters kept the flames from spreading to a row of similar structures nearby.

The incident was reported at 3:22 a.m. at 214 A.Z. Phillips Road, located off N.C. 268 in the Elkin area. Eight volunteer fire departments would end up responding to the incident.

“I would say at one time we had probably 45 to 50 firefighters,” said Lanny Whitaker, captain of the CC Camp Volunteer Fire Department, the primary unit dispatched.

“The chicken house was pretty well gone when we arrived,” Whitaker said, describing that structure as “abandoned.”

“There were no chickens in it.”

However, firefighters were able to protect a row of five or six other poultry houses alongside the one destroyed. “They were supposed to get them (chickens) this week, Whitaker said of those structures.

“We were very fortunate,” he said of the windy conditions that have affected the area in recent days.

The reason so many fire departments responded to the scene was not because of the magnitude of the incident, with Whitaker explaining that it was simply “a bad location for water.”

Initially, the Jot-Um-Down and South Surry volunteer units joined the CC Camp department, and the Central Surry, Mountain Park, White Plains and State Road departments responded to a second alarm. The Pleasant Hill Volunteer Fire Department from Wilkes County also was called in, while Boonville firefighters provided standby assistance.

Firefighters cleared the scene about 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

While the cause of the blaze did not appear to be suspicious, the Surry County Fire Marshal’s Office is investigating it, Whitaker said.

The owner of the damaged property was not identified and Whitaker did not have a monetary estimate for the loss.