Update (3/25/2021) — The fire in Hope that destroyed a home on the Camden Road, Sunday, March 21, remains under investigation by the Forest Protection Division of the Maine Forest Service.

Fire Marshal’s Office to determine cause of Hope house fire

HOPE — Hope, Camden, and Lincolnville firefighters contended with several obstacles as they battled a mobile home fire on the Camden Road, Sunday evening.

Just prior to 7 p.m., March 21, Knox Regional Communications Center received multiple reports of a small brush fire that was spreading toward a structure. Expecting a ground-level spread of flames along the earth, the first Hope personnel on scene instead found a fully engulfed mobile home, which prompted a First Alarm to initiate Camden and Lincolnville.

The firefighters’ initial concern was focused on a 300-pound propane cylinder at the back corner of the structure, according to Hope Fire Chief Clarence Keller.

“Everything else was a loss at that point,” said Keller. “Our concern was getting that tank cooled so that we didn’t have an explosion of the tank,” though the propane had already burned itself off.

All occupants of the home at 298 Camden Road were out of the structure and accounted for by the time firefighters arrived, however, a couple of cats still remained unaccounted for by 9:15 p.m., according to Keller.

Crews arrived to find heavy fire at the house, set back from the road and surrounded on two sides by vehicles and other discarded items. Trees and brush lined the other two sides of the property.

“Because of a lot of the stuff that they had stored in the driveway – kind of hampers the efforts of getting to the building,” said Hope Fire Chief Clarence Keller.

Some of those items and vehicles also caught fire.

The road in the area of the scene was closed to traffic for as many as 4.5 hours as upwards of four tanker trucks kept water supply in continuous motion by backing down Robbins Road, to the nearest hydrant, pulling forward again to Camden Road, then turning around and backing down Camden Road to the pump pool in front of the house.

Once the worst of the flames were extinguished, firefighters used chainsaws to clear out some of the treeline brush for easier access with the hose lines.

No injuries were reported.

Camden cleared from the scene just before 10 p.m. Hope and Lincolnville remained on scene until shortly after 11:30 p.m.

The Fire Marshal’s Office will be assisting Hope FD with determining the cause of fire.

Reach Sarah Thompson at news@penbaypilot.com