Chimney fire at Focus publisher's house

FORT KENT - At approximately 6:10 p.m., the Fort Kent Fire Department responded to a report of a chimney fire at 671 Frenchville Road...hang on.  That's my house.

There is nothing like ordering your children, wife and mother-in-law to grab their coats and head out into a dark night of sub-zero weather because the house might be on fire. It catches your attention.

On Wednesday night, as we were preparing dinner, a woman knocked on our door and told my wife we had a chimney fire.

We both yelled for the rest of the family to get out of the house, and I went outside to look for myself before calling the fire department.

Silhouetted against the night sky, the chimney had transformed into a rocket engine, with a flaming jet of red fire shooting up about five feet above the cement cap. Sparks were spewing in all directions.

I ran back inside and called 911, yelling for the kids to get their tuckus' in gear and get out of the house. My mother-in-law/accountant grabbed the latest financial information for Fiddlehead Focus, I grabbed my reporters' backpack, and everyone headed out into the cold.

In the few minutes it took for the volunteer fire department to show up, no less than five people either called us or stopped by to make sure we knew we had a chimney fire. It was strangely calm as we waited for the firefighters to arrive, watching the flames shooting high and seeing sparks landing on the roof.

The first firefighter to arrive came in a Daigle Oil Company van.

ARRIVING IN MINUTES - A line of firetrucks sits in Fiddlehead Focus Publisher Andrew Birden's driveway, respondiong to a chimney fire in the home. - Daigle image

Within three more minutes, trucks pulled into the driveway, and soon there was a team of firefighters using three ladders to get on the roof. Another team was in the basement hauling embers and hot creosote out of the chimney and dumping them in a nearby snow bank.  Over the next hour, my family sat in a heated car while Firefighter Curtis Saucier's team dropped fire retardant into our chimney and Ed Endee's group monitored the results in the basement.

At one point, my wife, Sofia Birden, darted inside the house to grab the back-up disk drive that held 18 months of the Fiddlehead Focus archive.

CRAWLING WITH FIREFIGHTERS - Teams quickly climbed to the roof and another team stayed in the basement as the firefighters repeatedly extinguished the chimney fire with chemicals. - Daigle image

Reporter Julie Daigle arrived and I had a strange feeling of exposure, as I realized we were going to be in the news.

The chimney was very hot in places, but no smoke was getting into the house.

The fire kept flaring up, but eventually it seemed to be out.

The cause appears to be creosote buildup from this strange winter where the weather keeps flip-flopping from cold and wet to warm and wet.

The firefighters used an infrared camera to check the walls and chimney for hot spots. They also dismantled and reassembled the stove piping in the basement.

By 7:30, the family was back inside and eating their dinner.

X-RAY VISION - Firefighter John Plourde uses an infrared camera to trace down hot spots in the walls of the Birden house. - Birden image

In a previous interview that reporter Julie Daigle had with Fire Chief Dave Pelletier, he said large swings in temperature and wind can combine to start chimney fires.  The fires, which can quickly transform into full-blown structure fires, usually happen in the spring, but this year's warm weather has caused numerous chimney fires already.

Folks with chimneys should have someone clean the chimney every year. It is also a relatively simple task to hold a mirror inside the access hatch at the base of the chimney to look upward to the top of the shaft to see if creosote has been building.

The response of the community to let us know about the fire was invaluable, but also unsurprising. In fact, there was one woman who called the police to let us know that we could stay at her house overnight if we were unable to return to our own home.

It was another reminder of why I love this amazing community and how the people of the St. John Valley look out for each other.