A member of the Robbins family will return home to Searsmont this week, more than five months after she suffered critical burns in a silo explosion at the local lumber yard.
Lily Robbins, who has been recovering at Massachusetts General Hospital’s burn unit since May, will make her homecoming Friday, according to the town of Searsmont.
Residents are encouraged to bring snacks, desserts and homemade “Welcome Home” signs to the fire station starting at 9 a.m. Friday. The town will later release more details about the timing of Robbins’ return and her travel plans, “so everyone who wishes can come out and welcome her home!”
“Thank you to our amazing community for all the love, prayers, encouragement, and support throughout Lily’s recovery. Let’s give her the welcome home she deserves!” the town wrote in a social media post.
The fire broke out about 10:05 a.m. on May 15 at the Robbins Lumber campus off Route 131 in an area where wood shavings are packed in plastic bags and spread to a nearby silo.
At the time, the silo was about 20% filled with sawdust and wood shavings. The silo had a fire suppression system, but it failed to activate because the temperatures at the top had not become hot enough to trigger it.
Smoke could be seen coming from the base, and later an orange glow, prompting firefighters to pour water into the silo and the room at its base, which unbeknownst to them was adding oxygen and stirring up dust suspended in an “explosive mixture,” according to a federal investigation into the disaster.
READ MORE ABOUT THE SEARSMONT MILL DISASTER
Then the silo exploded without warning about 11 a.m., throwing, in a blast of pressure and fire, mill employees, firefighters and EMS providers who stood nearby.
Firefighters, many of them critically injured, rushed to pull survivors away from the inferno, as nearly 300 firefighters from 46 departments across four counties scrambled to the lumber yard to contain the blaze and tend to the wounded.
Morrill firefighter Andrew Cross, 27, died at the scene of the fire. Searsmont’s assistant fire Chief, Wayne Woodbury, succumbed to his injuries on June 14. The blaze, one of the worst industrial disasters in recent Maine history, also killed one of the company’s co-owners, Alden Robbins, who died on July 2.
At least 10 other people, including first responders, a mill employee and another of the mill’s co-owners, were injured in the fire.
Robbins Lumber is a leading supplier of eastern white pine products, with roots in Searsmont that stretch back nearly 150 years. It employs more than 100 people.
The mill resumed operations on May 26.