The State Fire Marshal’s Office has declared a structure fire in Boothbay Harbor Sunday afternoon to be of suspicious origin.
The fire partially destroyed a house under renovation on Middle Road in Boothbay Harbor. Boothbay Harbor Fire Chief Glen Townsend said the house was unoccupied.
The interior of the house was basically stripped down to the studs, Townsend said.
“It had been gutted basically,” Townsend said. “There was no sheetrock on the walls; no doors; very little electricity going to it. They had been stripping it out to continue construction on it. We knew something wasn’t right when we got there.”
Townsend said the fire burned through the roof, “self-vented,” shortly after firefighters made their first interior attack.
“By the time we got there it was venting off two different sides of the roof,” he said. “We had to fight it outside, we couldn’t fight it inside.”
Townsend said firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze in about two hours but remained on scene until 6 p.m. at the request of the State Fire Marshal. The fire did re-ignite briefly, but was stopped quickly.
“It started downstairs in the northeast corner of the living room,” Townsend said. “It burned straight up through because there was no sheetrock. It was like a story and half house and it burned up and came through the roof.”
Per usual protocol, Boothbay was assisted at the scene by Boothbay Harbor, Edgecomb and Southport units.
Townsend described the house as a 1930s era structure, adding it was built by a former member of the fire department. Although damage was considerable, Townsend, a contractor himself, said the house was salvageable.
