NEW VINEYARD – A wood stove is believed to be the cause of a fire that destroyed Nile Logging’s garage, equipment and tools Friday morning on Church Street.

Fire Chief Douglas Churchill said Douglas Nile’s business property was a total loss and was not insured. His logging trucks and skidders, however, were all out of the building and undamaged.

The approximately 28-by-40-foot wooden building was engulfed and the roof caved in by the time firefighters arrived shortly after 11 a.m., he said.

Neither Nile, who is a longtime member of the Fire Department, nor his wife, Janet, were at their home beside the garage when the fire broke out, but they arrived soon after, Churchill said.

“He informed me that he had had a fire going in the garage in the stove,” the chief said. “He’d left to go cut some wood, and then he got a phone call. He was quite sure it was caused by the wood stove,” Churchill said.

The fire station is approximately a quarter-mile from the Niles’ home at 78 Church St. and a few hundred yards from the post office on Route 234 where someone stopped to ask the postmistress to call 911 to report the fire.

About two dozen firefighters from New Vineyard, Strong and New Portland battled the flames using water from tankers. The outside help was necessary, Churchill said, because New Vineyard has only about a dozen firefighters who all work out of town during the day.

Douglas Nile had a lot of equipment and tools in the garage, his wife said. He had just gotten a new generator, and there was a wood conveyor and tanks of chemicals for doing welding as well as hydraulics and oil, she said.

“Nothing was saved, but the cats and dog were safe,” she said.

There was no estimate of the loss.

Along with logging, Douglas Nile plows snow for the town of New Vineyard and cuts fire wood for the Community Action Program, his wife said.

The fire chief said Nile, 56, is well-known in town because of his business, community service and generosity.

“It was last year,” the chief recalled, when Nile helped his neighbor after a fire.

“There was a structure fire down the road from his house, and the house was a total loss, and he had just built his house” to replace a trailer he’d been living in. “He gave his neighbor the trailer as a place to live,” he said.

The chief said it wouldn’t surprise him if people step forward now to help the Niles.