MINOT – Mechanic Falls police officer Tim Gamache made his way to a fire on West Minot Road Wednesday thinking he could help control traffic while firefighters battled the blaze.

Instead, Gamache was the first on the scene as the back of a two-story home went up in flames. The first thing he did was to determine nobody was inside the burning house. Then he turned his attention to a pair of Labrador retrievers.

“There were flames and smoke shooting everywhere,” Gamache said Thursday. “The dogs were outside, but they ran back into a foyer. They were heading toward the door, trying to get back inside.”

Gamache, who recently lost his own German shepard to illness, ran toward the burning building to rescue the dogs.

“I got ahold of them and got them away from the house,” he said. Both were Labs, one black, one chocolate.

An investigator from the State Fire Marshal’s Office Thursday said the fire may have been started by a candle left burning on a dining room table. Remnants of the candle could not be found, however, and the official cause remains undetermined, according to Fire Marshal’s investigator Chris Stanford.

Fire officials said Tony and Isabel DeStefano, who live in the home at 706 West Minot Road home with their three children, were not inside when the fire started. Nobody was hurt in the blaze, which required crews from six towns to extinguish.

The house was gutted and most of its contents destroyed, according to Minot fire Chief Stephen French. The house was insured.

Gamache said he hung onto the dogs while firefighters were battling the blaze, later turning them over to the DeStefano family.