LINCOLN, MAINE — A Maine Forest Service helicopter and 48 firefighters from four towns successfully doused a forest fire atop Bagley Mountain late Monday, preventing it from consuming hundreds of acres, officials said Tuesday.
The firefighters had to use ATVs to get through thickly wooded uphill terrain to reach the fire. They ran hoses 1,800 feet and worked for 10 hours, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., before the fire was extinguished. It burned only about eight-tenths of an acre, Fire Chief Phil Dawson said.
“Based on the weather conditions, there was a good possibility for it to go 100 acres yesterday,” Forest Ranger Ritchie Hafford said Tuesday, “and with more wind and whatnot it could have gone [through] more than that. It happened to be on the downwind side of the mountain so it was protected from the wind.
“The fuel [propelling the fire] was immature softwood, so the fire was burning through the lighter fuels on the ground but had all kinds of potential to climb into the trees, get caught in the wind and spread a lot farther,” Hafford added.
No firefighters were injured, Dawson said, and no structures were threatened by the fire.
With help from several residents, including Justin Dean and Linwood Perry, firefighters used three or four donated all-terrain vehicles to shuttle themselves, food, gasoline and other supplies and equipment up a narrow ATV trail and through woods. Firefighter David Slomienski donated his own ATV, Dawson said.
Three 2½-ton trucks made for forest fires complemented the six regular firetrucks that came to the fire, and resident Steve Libby Jr. donated a tractor to the effort, Dawson said. Control stations at three points helped prevent traffic jams on the narrow trail, an old logging road.
“It’s not the biggest operation I have seen, but certainly one of the most challenging,” Dawson said.
Manned by forest service Chief Pilot John Knight, the helicopter flew from its Old Town station and made two passes, dropping a total of 4,800 gallons of water on the fire, a relatively small amount, Knight said.
“It was just a very hard fire for them to fight and access, to get water in to,” Knight said.
Firefighters from Lee, Mattawamkeag and Passadumkeag assisted Lincoln firefighters, while a partial crew of town firefighters staffed the Public Safety Building to guard against other emergencies. Some Howland firefighters also stood by, Dawson said.
Forest service helicopters typically handle 30 to 40 forest fires annually, but some especially dry years have forced as many as 100 fire flights, Knight said.
Bagley Mountain is a mountain summit in Penobscot County about five miles from Winn that rises to 883 feet above sea level, according to mountainzone.com.
Hafford is working to determine what caused the fire. He doesn’t believe it was set intentionally. It might have been ignited by an ATV with a faulty spark arrester because it began near an ATV trail, he said.
“A lot of folks will modify the spark arresters on their machines or don’t know how to maintain them,” Hafford said. “I hope that’s not it, because something like this might drive landowners to gate their land and to not allow ATVers on their property.”
Lightning strikes could have caused the fire, Hafford said, but he is inclined to rule them out because they were reported to the north and south of the blaze.
Firefighters were glad for the rainstorm that passed through Penobscot County on Tuesday, as the windy, dry conditions made forest fires much more likely, Hafford said.