BANGOR, Maine — Nearly a dozen wildfires around the state kept forest rangers and firefighters busy over the weekend, a Maine Forest Service official said Sunday.
The two largest and most stubborn were in Cathance Township in Washington County and atop Abraham Mountain in Mount Abram Township near Kingfield, Regional Forest Ranger Jeff Currier said Sunday. Both wildfires are expected to take days to extinguish, he said.
Roughly 25 firefighters and three forest rangers are battling the fire at Cathance, where 18 to 20 acres were burning Sunday, Currier said. While crews saved a house that was at risk of burning, a garage and outbuilding nearby were lost, he said.
No one was home when that fire broke out. The cause remains under investigation, he said.
“It is still going and it will be going for the next several days. It’s going to take a long time to mop this thing up because of how it burned erratically,” he said. “It burned in what we call ‘fingers,’ meaning it didn’t burn in one continuous swath. It kind of made little runs,” he said. “So it made the perimeter so much longer and our efforts more difficult.”
Currier said two excavators were being used to dig a fire line to keep the fire contained.
Meanwhile, rangers were working to douse a roughly 27-acre wildfire atop Mount Abraham on a parcel that the state owns as public reserve land, Currier said.
“That fire is quite problematic for us, given that it’s on top of the mountain,” he said. “There’s [limited] pumpable water on scene so we’re having to fly in our water,” he said, pointing out that rangers are using 72-gallon blivets, or water bags, to haul water to the mountaintop.
“We are taking this fire very seriously because it does have the potential for growth,” Currier said. “We’ll be there for several days as well.”
A smaller wildfire on Green Island in Lake St. George in Liberty had a human element, Currier said. It was sparked by an illegal campfire set without permission from the landowner.
“They didn’t extinguish their fire so we’re going to continue to investigate that and if we can find out who did it, we’ll probably be taking enforcement action against them. It’s a criminal violation,” he said.
In addition, he said, a 2-acre wildfire was put out in Lebanon as well as wildfires of an acre or less in Tomhegan Township at the north end of Moosehead Lake, along Route 6 in Princeton, at Township 41 MD in northern Hancock County, along Route 11 in Mount Chase and in Casco, Palermo and Glenburn.
The Casco fire was caused by someone who had a burn permit but did not adhere to all the restrictions, while the Palermo fire was started by a spark from haying equipment. The cause of the Glenburn wildfire was improperly disposed of stove ashes, Currier said.
Currier said this has been an unusual fire season so far, largely because the “green up” period that usually occurs in June and brings a lull in wildfire activity hasn’t occurred to the extent that it usually does.
“We have a limited number of rangers and trained firefighters. If this keeps up, it may be problematic. We’re hopeful that it doesn’t. How we avoid all that is we get on fires quickly. That’s the key to this” as well as enforcing open fire laws, he said.
“If we could encourage the public to do one thing it’s when they see smoke to go ahead and call it in. That’s what we’re here for. We’ll go check it out. We’d rather have a report that turns out to be nothing than a smoke that’s ignored and quickly grows to something.”