MEDWAY, Maine — Discarded cigarette butts appear to have started a fire that badly damaged Al’s Bar & Grill on Route 157 Sunday night, according to Medway Assistant Fire Chief Greg Hale.
Firefighters were called to the scene shortly before 11 p.m. and arrived to find “heavy fire on the northwest corner of the building,” Hale said.
Two teams of Medway firefighters entered the building and “contained the fire to the west end of the building,” according to Hale.
The assistant chief said the state fire marshal’s office investigated the fire Monday morning and found that the fire started in a garbage can in the “beer garden,” an outside area where patrons go to smoke.
Hale said it appears someone disposed of hot cigarette butts or emptied an ashtray into the garbage can, which was set against the wall of the building. The garbage caught fire and the flames eventually spread to the interior of the building where it burned through the wall, according to Hale.
Hale said the manager left after closing at about 10:30 p.m., but “she didn’t see anything or smell anything” that indicated a fire, Hale said.
“It’s bad enough to where they’re going to have to tear it down and rebuild it,” Hale said, adding that some equipment at the east side of the building might be salvageable in spite of smoke and water damage throughout the building. The assistant chief said he didn’t know whether the owners had insurance.
It took about 25 firefighters 45 minutes to knock down the blaze. Fire crews from Mattawamkeag and East Millinocket assisted, Hale said.
The bar’s general manager did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
900 people in the United States die each year in fires started by cigarettes, and about 2,500 are injured.
About 100 of the fire deaths each year are children and nonsmokers.
Nationally, annual human and property costs of fires caused by careless smoking total about $6 billion. Anually, there are more than 130,000 cigarette related fires.
Nasty addiction.
Nasty carelessness.
Sound like the same thing that happened at Tozier’s II in Bucksport.
Come on people, BE CAREFUL with those cigarettes. YOU may have inadvertently torched your favorite watering hole .
I thought smoking wasn’t allowed in public businesses! What’s up with that?
It occurred in the “beer garden” which is a fenced in area outside of the building – for bars, that is the designated smoking area. People can smoke in designated smoking areas in public businesses. There was no wrong-doing here.
There was wrong doing, the people were smoking inside the building, they emptied the ash tray into the cigarette can outside in the beer garden, this was bound to happen eventually!
And this privy information is ‘built into’ this article somewhere, or are those lines you magically read between?
Cutting wit!
not inside the building OUTSIDE in the beer garden….a patio out back that is fenced in!
Someone wrongly disposed of the butts!
There is an expression that is pretty popular on Facebook, “You can’t fix stupid, not even with duct tape.” This would be a good example….
I thought FSC was supposed to curtail these types of accidents?
I was leving there with my John and saw some people smoking in the beer garden. Wanted to turn around an d tell them to get the can away from the wall but my John was getting frisky so we had to get to the Pamola real quick.