Bristol firefighters extinguished a fire at a Frick & Frack Firewood kiln on Sodom Road Sept. 18, within “a matter of minutes,” Bristol Fire Chief Paul Leeman said.
Firefighters got the call at about 5:30 p.m., Leeman said. He estimated the damage at about $2800 to the kiln and $1800 for lost firewood.
After the firefighters put out the blaze, Clint Gilbert, a Frick & Frack Firewood employee, brought two bins of firewood outside with a forklift and emptied them. “There was still fire inside,” Leeman said. “Unless you pick the wood apart, it’s difficult to put it out.”
“We’re fortunate that it remained self-contained,” Leeman said. Bremen, Damariscotta and South Bristol trucks were en route to the scene, but Bristol cancelled the call for mutual aid before they arrived.
“We seem to burn [kilns] down on a pretty regular basis,” Frick & Frack Firewood co-owner Paul Blomquist said. Fires in Jan. 2006 and March 2009 destroyed the company’s old, homemade kilns. In terms of limiting damage, then, “This was our most successful fire yet,” Blomquist said.
The company burns waste wood to heat the kiln. Saturday, a “weld on the firebox… failed,” Blomquist said, allowing sparks to “escape into the kiln vessel itself, the drying area,” which holds six cords of wood.
“It doesn’t take an awful lot” to ignite the drying wood, Blomquist said. Fortunately, Gilbert “just happened to stop in randomly” and “happened to notice there was smoke coming out of a place there wasn’t supposed to be smoke coming out of.”
Gilbert called the fire department and Blomquist credited their “incredibly quick response” for minimizing damage to the kiln. Firefighters arrived on the scene “within 5-6 minutes” after Gilbert’s call, Blomquist said. “You don’t get that response in the cities.”
Of course, after three fires, the department has plenty of experience responding to Blomquist’s property. “They’re getting good at it,” Blomquist said.
The company’s new kiln is engineered to prevent fires, and Blomquist said they plan to install a sprinkler system soon.
