A fire in an electric fan caused heavy smoke damage to a house at 95 Beechnut Hill Rd. in Wiscasset early Saturday morning, Aug. 15.
An “oscillating stand-up fan” caught fire and the fire burned about 8 feet up a wall, Wiscasset Fire Chief T.J. Merry said. Lincoln County Communications dispatched the Wiscasset Fire Department at 6:25 a.m.
Firefighters “never had to use any water,” Merry said. “It was out when we got here, but the house was full of smoke. Lot of smoke damage, that’s pretty much the biggest part of it.”
“I’m guessing the plastic on the back side of the fan probably burned itself out,” Merry said.
Upon arriving, firefighters breached a locked door in order to remove the fan. Firefighters inspected the house with a thermal camera “to check for hot spots and make sure there’s no fire going through walls or in the floors,” Merry said.
Firefighters also opened windows and ran two positive-pressure fans to remove the smoke, according to Merry.
The adult homeowners were in the house at the time of the fire. They received medical attention at the scene for smoke inhalation.
“They went back in for their cat, so that’s how they got all their smoke,” Merry said. The smoke “filled the entire house. It’s not even habitable right now as far as smoke damage goes. We can’t let them go back in just for the safety reasons.”
The fate of the cat was not immediately clear.
There is “a lot of black smoke damage” throughout the entire house, although the homeowners will be able to remediate the damage with a professional cleaning and by painting over the smoke damage, according to Merry.
“That won’t cause permanent damage at all,” he said.
Wiscasset records list the homeowner as Cheryl L. Rust, the longtime proprietor of Le Garage.
The Wiscasset Ambulance Service, Wiscasset Fire Department, and Wiscasset Police Department responded to the scene.
Lincoln County Communications initially paged the Alna, Boothbay, Dresden, Edgecomb, and Westport Island fire departments for mutual aid, either to respond to the scene or provide station coverage.
“We canceled all of our mutual aid,” Merry said. “We did get them started because of the heavy black smoke that was coming out originally.”
