Fire destroyed a home on Hunter Road in Dresden around midday Friday, April 24. Ten fire departments battled the blaze for more than two hours.
There were no injuries, Dresden Fire Chief Steven Lilly said. Nobody was home when the fire started.
The fire originated in the “main part” of the house, according to State Fire Marshal’s Office Sgt. Ken Grimes, although the cause of the fire remains undetermined due to the extent of damage. The home was insured.
Janet Stewart owns the home and was its sole resident, according to officials. Stewart owns Meetinghouse Market, a convenience store on Route 27. The home is at 131 Hunter Road, at the end of a long dirt drive and on the west shore of the Eastern River.
The home was fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived, Lilly said. The condition of the road, the windy day, and the presence of a large propane tank outside the residence all complicated firefighting efforts.
“The road was a little soft,” Lilly said. There were deep trenches in the road where at least one truck appears to have become momentarily stuck.
The firefighters stopped bringing trucks all the way down the road. Instead, firefighters ran hundreds of feet of hose from the house to a farm pond at Eastern River Cattle Co. “because we couldn’t do a tanker shuttle because the road wouldn’t hold up,” Lilly said.
“The wind was definitely a factor for a while,” Lilly said – enough to spread the flames to the nearby woods.
“We had a woods fire at the same time,” Lilly said. “We ran a line down there and had a crew take care of putting that fire out too.”
Firefighters also had to monitor a 500-gallon propane tank behind the house. “We had to dedicate a fair amount of water to that just to get that cooled down, ’cause it was hot,” Lilly said.
Despite those challenges, firefighters had the blaze under control in about an hour, Lilly said.
A couple of small dogs escaped the blaze, according to a neighbor.
Lincoln County Communications paged the Dresden Fire Department at 11:41 a.m.
The Alna, Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Pittston, Randolph, Richmond, West Bath, Wiscasset, and Woolwich fire departments assisted Dresden.
Central Maine Power Co., the Lincoln and Sagadahoc County sheriff’s offices, and the State Fire Marshal’s Office also responded to the scene.
There were dozens of firefighters at the scene, but “not that many people” considering the number of towns, Lilly said. “People don’t want to volunteer anymore like they used to,” he said.
