EMBDEN — A fire destroyed a marijuana-growing facility Tuesday morning in Embden, officials said.
Someone driving by 215 Wentworth Road just before 8 a.m. saw that the building was ablaze and called it in, said Anson Fire Chief Stacey Beane. A number of crews from across Somerset County — Anson, Madison, Starks, Solon, Norridgewock and Bingham — responded to the fire.
Beane said that the building was “pretty much” destroyed by the fire. The facility’s first floor was “compromised and caved in,” said Beane, but one garage-like structure — what Beane termed a “mud room” — was still intact by the time firefighters cleared the scene at noon.
Fire Chief Beane said more than one person was inside the building when the fire broke out, but all made it out. One person, Beane said, was taken to Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan to be treated for smoke inhalation.
Shannon Moss, spokesperson for Maine’s Department of Public Safety, confirmed the building in question was a marijuana growing facility. Moss wrote in an email that it is an “undetermined fire” — the cause may have been an electrical problem, she said, but “there is too much damage” to say for sure.
Officials didn’t immediately know whether the facility was licensed.
Only a week and a half ago, a marijuana-growing facility burned down in Vassalboro, marking the second such facility to be destroyed by fire in that town this year. A marijuana grow operation on Webber Pond Road in Vassalboro was destroyed by fire in February, in a blaze that officials determined was accidental and caused by an electrical problem.
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