DIXFIELD — Firefighters from Dixfield, Mexico,
and Peru responded to a structure fire late Friday night in a
vacant house at 20 Park Ave.
Med-Care Ambulance and Mexico and Dixfield police, who were at Dirigo High School's homecoming festivities just up the road, also responded.
A quick knockdown prevented the fire
from spreading to the rest of the house, neighbors said while
standing in the rain on their lawns watching firefighters enter and
vent the building.
Dense smoke poured out of the western
side of the house near the roof peak by 9 p.m. as firefighters inside
tried to extinguish it. A smaller column of smoke streamed out the
eastern side of the house from the roof peak.
The fire was first reported to Oxford
County emergency dispatchers as smoke showing. The first arriving
emergency responder then radioed in that it was a fully-involved
structure fire.
“When I saw it, flames were coming
out the back of the house from the roof eaves,” next-door neighbor
Joel Fulford of 16 Park Ave. said. “The fire was coming from where
the (electrical) wires go in and all the smoke was just rolling out
the vents.
He said a girl from the neighborhood ran to his home and alerted him to the fire.
“Four-foot-long flames were shooting
right out right where the wires come out,” he said.
Pointing to a live electrical wire
hanging from a utility pole on the opposite side of the street,
Fulford said the wire, which appeared to be partially connected to
the building, was hanging down low when he first saw it.
A Central Maine Power Co. lineman arrived
at 9:38 p.m. and shut off electrical power to the house.
Fulford said Friday's fire was the
building's second fire this year.
According to the Dixfield selectmen
minutes from May 11, owner Denise Letalien of 20 Park Ave. filed for and
received a temporary disconnection from the town sewer system,
because the building had first caught fire on May 3.
Firefighters arrived to find windows
still boarded up with plywood, on which was written in large red
letters, “For Sale.”
“They had a tough time getting in,
but once they did, it only took them a few minutes to put it out,”
Fulford said.
Terry Karkos/Sun Journal
Smoke rises into the Friday night's rain from a structure fire at a vacant house at 20 Park Ave. in Dixfield that first burned six months. Charred wood outside and inside indicated where Friday night's flames erupted.
Terry Karkos/Sun Journal
A live electrical wire hangs down from a vacant house at 20 Park Ave. that caught fire in Dixfield late Friday night. Dixfield firefighters set up a perimeter of traffic cones to prevent responders from four towns from walking under the dangling wire as they maneuvered from equipment from fire trucks to the scene. Smoke filled downtown Dixfield, partially obscuring visibility for drivers.
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