A fire early Tuesday tore through a cow barn on Corinna Center Road in Corinna, destroying the barn as well as tractors and other equipment inside the structure.

The fire, reported at 2:30 a.m. at 514 Corinna Center Road, drew about 40 firefighters from nine departments and leveled the older barn, which the owners had been stocking with hay the last few days, according to Corinna Fire Chief Allen Emerson. He said the 15 to 20 beef cattle were outside the barn and were unharmed.

“They were all out back in the pasture, so no cows were lost,” Emerson said.

Emerson said the state fire marshal’s office was notified of the fire. The barn, which was uninsured, is on the property of Eunice Watson, who lives in a mobile home about 100 feet from the barn, and the siding on the home melted off from the heat of the fire, according to Emerson. The mobile home is insured, he said.

He said the barn was about 40 feet by 200 feet in size, and when firefighters arrived at the scene, the barn was gone. A skid steer, tractors, a hay baler and other equipment inside also were destroyed.

“It may have been burning for, I wouldn’t dare say how long, before it was reported,” Emerson said.

He said a firefighter who lives up the road from the barn heard what he thought were gunshots when the barn was burning, but apparently the noise was from items or equipment inside the barn.

He said the fire appears to have started where the tractors and equipment were parked in the structure.

“The fire started at that end, so we’re kind of surmising it was some sort of equipment or something that started it,” he said.

Firefighters from Corinna, Newport, Dexter, Garland, Dover-Foxcroft, Hartland, St. Albans and Plymouth responded to fight the fire, and Detroit firefighters stood by at the Newport station, according to Emerson. He said no one was injured while fighting the fire.

In the past, there was a large farmhouse on the property and the barn was used for dairy purposes, but the house is no longer there and now there are only beef cattle on the property, he said. He said he is not sure where the cattle will be housed, but area farmers have helped people in the past who needed assistance with their animals.