Florenceville-Bristol house significantly damaged, three pets die from smoke inhalation
A call that no fire department ever wants to receive came in on Tuesday, March 26, at 3:23 p.m. — a home owned by one of their own was on fire. Deputy Fire Chief Mike Palmer’s children discovered a fire at their house when they arrived home after school.
Fire Chief Andrew Cougle told the River Valley Sun that the fire started in the kitchen, and the cause is still under investigation.
While firefighters saved the structure, the family will be displaced for two to three months while repairing the significant fire, heat, and smoke damage that gutted the house.
Florenceville-Bristol firefighters were the primary respondents, with Bath providing mutual aid and the Centreville fire department providing extra tanker support.
Cougle commended the teams for saving the home.
“Our first attack team had the fire extinguished in a very short time and only had to use 120 gallons of water,” he said.
While no one was home at the time of the fire, three beloved family pets were lost due to smoke inhalation, and the family is mourning their loss.
Cougle noted that responding to the fire of “one of your own” is a challenging experience.
“It steps it up a bit; there’s a bit more of an adrenaline rush than you would usually get, when it’s one of your own. But, once you get there and you know that all the people are okay, then you have a job to do and that job is to extinguish the fire and try and save as much of the person’s property as you can. And I think we did a pretty fair job.”
