Jefferson Workshop Destroyed in ‘Devastating’ Blaze

Firefighters from eight towns worked for five hours to contain a blaze that destroyed a two-story woodworking shop on the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 30.

The workshop contained an extensive collection of antique tools, handmade items, and other equipment collected over the past four decades by Jefferson woodworker Lester Baker.

“It was a devastating loss,” said Pam Perry-Baker, Baker’s wife.

The Lincoln County Communications Center paged first responders from Jefferson, Nobleboro, Somerville, Whitefield, and Waldoboro at 2:50 p.m. for reports of a structure fire at 492 Gardiner Road. Newcastle, Washington and Windsor fire departments and Waldoboro EMS were later called to the scene. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office provided traffic control.

Walker said the fire burned for an unknown period of time before it was discovered.

“There was a lot of heavy fire for quite some time before somebody noticed it,” Walker said.

Baker was teaching a student in the workshop that morning before heading over to his home, a detached building adjacent to the shop on the same property, for lunch, Walker said. Firefighters contained the blaze to the detached workshop.

The workshop was Baker’s “special place,” Perry-Baker said. Baker, who is legally blind, worked mostly by feel in the shop. He had been instructing a local homeschooled child in woodworking before the fire. The student’s project was also destroyed, Perry-Baker said.

Because nobody was inside the building when the fire started, determining when exactly it began was impossible, Walker said. By the time first responders were alerted, the blaze had spread throughout the workshop, burning almost all the way through the 10-inch-by-10-inch timbers of the building’s frame.

By 3:30 p.m., the fire had burned through portions of the roof and walls.

The timber frame workshop’s solid construction made for a “stubborn” fire, Walker said. Crews remained on scene for about five hours.

“It did not want to go out. We ended up ripping and tearing everything apart” to extinguish the blaze, Walker said.

The fire chief said the building was a total loss.

Walker said preliminary investigations suggested the fire started in the area of the wood stove chimney inside the building. The cause of the fire is still under investigation by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, according to Maine Department of Public Safety Public Information Officer Shannon Moss.

The scene was cleared at about 8 p.m. Oct. 30.