ANDOVER, Maine — A local man who lives in a remote trailer on South Arm Road at first refused to leave his burning home, delaying crews from fighting the fire during Friday night’s frigid cold, Fire Chief Rob Dixon said Saturday morning.
“On our arrival, the resident was not very hospitable,” the fire chief said. “That, and he refused to leave the building, caused us a delay in taking further action. He called a friend at first to try to put out the fire, and they called us when they couldn’t do it.”
The call for help was made just before 5 p.m. Friday. Firefighters found smoke billowing out the eaves of a second roof installed on a mobile home when they arrived.
“It was clearly an attic fire,” said Dixon, who called in help from fire departments in Dixfield, Peru, Mexico and Rumford. “Pretty quickly the fire burned through the roof where the flue to the stovepipe was.”
The fire chief said he believes radiant heat from the chimney flue caused the fire to start in the attic space.
“That mobile home had been rebuilt, redesigned and restructured many, many times,” Dixon said. “He basically had a double roof. It kind of trapped the fire up there.”
Both roofs were metal, which made getting access to the flame more difficult, the chief said, adding the cold didn’t help.
“The cold was definitely an issue,” Dixon said. “Myself, I was frozen to the core. Your gloves were frozen, and you couldn’t move.”