By Dominik Lobkowicz
Shawn Day (left), of Nobleboro, and Waldoboro Police Officer Tom Bartunek at the scene of an unintended structure fire at 449 Gross Neck Road Sept. 2. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
A Nobleboro man issued a summons following an unintended structure fire in Waldoboro Sept. 2 says the dilapidated mobile home that burned was town-owned for years and the town should have disposed of it.
Shawn Day said he had been working for days to dismantle the 1970 Detroiter mobile home at 449 Gross Neck Rd. in anticipation of moving a new trailer to the property on Sept. 7.
Day was burning wood in a spot near the mobile home Sept. 2 when a propane tank in the grass that he didn’t know was there exploded, igniting the trailer, he said.
“It blew the door open to the house up the road,” he said.
The Waldoboro Fire Department responded to a call of a structure fire at the property, and Day says he was later issued a summons by the Maine Forest Service for burning prohibited materials.
“He [the forest ranger] said it was because of a piece of metal he found in the middle of the burn pile,” Day said.
John Bott, a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry confirmed Sept. 3 Day was issued a summons by a forest ranger, but said he was unable to comment further because the incident is under investigation.
Day disputes the summons, saying the metal came from the propane tank explosion.
“There was no metal in the wood whatsoever, when I started burning,” he said.
Waldoboro Fire Chief Paul Smeltzer said if a propane tank exploded there, it was before the fire department was on scene.
Day’s bigger issue, however, is with the town of Waldoboro, which he says owned the trailer for years and should have disposed of it.
“The town should’ve had it out of there years ago” because it was in such bad condition, Day said.
“I’ve been out there five days in a row just tearing that place down so it wasn’t standing when I burned next to it,” he said.
The trailer, owned by Day’s grandfather John Harvey, had been tax-acquired by the town of Waldoboro in 2010 for back taxes, according to Assessors’ Agent Darryl McKenney.
The Waldoboro Board of Selectmen, however, voted in March 2014 to give the trailer back to Harvey via a quitclaim deed, according to meeting minutes.
“When you walked in two and half years ago, you knew it was bad, you were about falling through the floor then, let alone now,” Day said. “The point is it should have been their responsibility to get it out of there.”
Harvey no longer even lives in Waldoboro, Day said.
According to McKenney, the town’s public works department was tasked with disposing of tax acquired properties that had no value, but ran into issues.
“We disposed of one on the Union Road and ran into a DEP environmental disaster. There was acid in the basement,” he said. “When we dropped a load in the hopper at the transfer station, smoke started coming out.”
The incident caused Public Works Director John Daigle to put the brakes on any further disposal, McKenney said.
The selectmen voted to give back Harvey’s trailer because it was going to cost more to have the trailer analyzed than to actually dispose of it, McKenney said.
Day said he had also been after Smeltzer to come do a training burn at the mobile home, but Smeltzer said he received no voice mails or other messages from Day.
Smeltzer said the condition of the mobile home would have prohibited a permit being issued for a training burn anyway.
“It’s very difficult for a department to do a training burn, and we have to be able to justify that it be viable training in order to burn a property,” Smeltzer said.
