For the third time in as many years, a house on South Bristol’s Inner Heron Island was struck by fire requiring emergency response from the mainland.
On Tuesday morning, a passing fisherman reported a structure fire on the southwestern side of the island. Within minutes, crews from Bristol and South Bristol were headed to Christmas Cove to board the three local fishing boats that would transport them to the scene. Bristol’s Fire and Rescue Boat was also on hand.
Bristol Fire Chief Ron Pendleton stayed on shore to help manage the response effort as more than 20 firefighters from the two towns boarded three lobster boats whose services local fishermen donated for the effort.
The first call originated at 10:55 a.m. By 12:30 p.m., the fire was completely contained.
According to South Bristol Fire Chief Mitch Mitchell, the fire was related to a propane leak at an unoccupied summer residence.
Mitchell estimated that at least a third of the home was completely destroyed. “This has been the third fire on Inner Heron in three years,” he said. The first, the result of a lightning strike, completely destroyed the home that was hit. The second fire, last summer, was a result of a tractor fire that spread to some nearby brush piles.
Both Mitchell and South Bristol lobsterman Chuck Plummer commented on the fact that Tuesday’s fire could’ve been much worse had winds not been blowing from a northeasterly direction, taking the smoke off shore, rather than back onto the island.
“By the time we got there, the residents already had a kind of old fashioned fire brigade going, with pumps and buckets,” said Mitchell “They were lugging water buckets and pumping water from cisterns. They really should be commended. They did a great job.”
When prompted, Mitchell briefly addressed the challenges of fire fighting off shore. “It’s very rustic out there,” he said. “You need to make sure you get all the equipment you need out there in one shot, because you can’t just run back to the truck.”
Complicating Tuesday’s effort was the fact that the landing is on the north side of the island, and the fire was almost three quarters of a mile away on the south side of the island, resulting in the need for tractors and golf carts to transport crews and equipment.
Mitchell also credited mutual aid support on the scene from Bristol Fire and Rescue for their help containing the fire. “They were great,” he said. “We couldn’t have done it without them. I really think we have one of the best mutual aid agreements in the state. We help them and they help us, and they were great.”
Local fisherman Johnny Seiders’s Comin and Goin, Francis Seiders’s RPJJ and Chuck Plummer’s Samuel Ryan provided ferry service out to the island.
