Greenberg Smoked Turkeys closed for the season

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - The night of November 6th, a portion of Greenberg Smoked Turkeys caught on fire leaving nearly 60,000 people without turkey this holiday season.

The owner explains how the catastrophic blaze and explosion will leave families without turkeys for the first time in over 80 years.

On November 6th, a fire took out the shipping and freezer facility of Greenberg Smoked Turkeys, leaving the business to cancel and refund orders. Owner, Sam Greenberg describes what it was like when he arrived at the scene.

“It was devastating to watch what happened on Friday night, nobody could watch that and not be sick. Saturday morning came and we gathered around, we developed a plan, we’re going to rebuild, we’ve formulated our plan. The first part was to refund the money and the second part is to close down for the season.”

Greenberg says just under 80,000 turkeys were destroyed in the fire.

“We had several weeks' worth of boxes in bags. We had all the bags, we can’t reorder those, it was a catastrophic loss. There was no one injured, no one harmed, everything is a-okay.”

The Tyler Fire Department was dispatched and Fire Marshal, Paul Findley describes what we know about the fire.

“It fairly clear to see that we have a fire in the building prior to seeing the explosions take place so, that’s not really arguable.”

The company will be closing down for the season as they aim to rebuild.

“This is not what we wanted, it’s not what any of these folks wanted, it’s not what any of my customers wanted, it’s what we got, it’s the hand we were dealt and we’ll get over it.”

As for employees who would have prepared all of those holiday birds, Greenberg says he will be taking care of his employees this holiday season.

“We’ll be fine, we’re just very fortunate to be in a town like Tyler where everybody is working in our favor to get us going again.”

The cause of the fire is still under investigation

Greenberg Smoked Turkeys will be refunding all orders that had been set to deliver after November 6.

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