The state has cited six fire departments in the wake of the deadly Searsmont lumber yard explosion.
But the Maine Occupational Safety and Health program has waived nearly all $108,000 in penalties so that Appleton, Belmont, Lincolnville, Montville, Morrill and Searsmont can “prioritize their limited resources” to improve firefighter safety, according to Bureau of Labor Standards Director Kate Burkhart.
The Bureau of Labor Standards is a unit of the Maine Department of Labor.
“We are responsible for ensuring that people working for state, county, and municipal governments and other public employers have safe workplaces,” Burkhart said in a Tuesday statement. “We do that best when we balance enforcement with supporting public employers as they address violations to improve safety, mitigate hazards and reduce the risk of future harm to employees.”
The six departments were cited after they were unable to keep track of firefighters’ locations, while another five were cited for issues with personal protective equipment, including breathing apparatuses.
All the departments have resolved those problems, while the state is working to assist with training to improve systems for tracking the location of firefighters.
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.
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.