OAKLAND — State fire investigators Saturday night were trying to determine the cause of a fire that destroyed a mobile home earlier in the day on Trafton Road while the homeowners were away for the winter, according to Fire Chief David Coughlin.
Coughlin said the fire at the home of Ted and Jean Brown appears to have started outside the house, so the Office of the State Fire Marshall was summoned to help investigate the cause.
“We haven’t made any determination, other than the fact that it didn’t look right, given the fact that the homeowners are away for the winter,” Coughlin said just after 7 p.m. “The last time a family member was there was a week ago. It didn’t add up to me.”
About 35 firefighters from Oakland, Rome, Belgrade, Sidney and Fairfield battled the blaze, which was hard to fight because of strong wind, according to Coughlin. “We got a good start on it. The fire was already up overhead and it was wind-fed, so we couldn’t really catch up to it,” he said around 4:30 p.m. at the scene.
The mobile home is on a hill at 431 Trafton Road, almost on the Waterville city line and about 5 miles from the Oakland fire station. The fire was reported at 3:30 p.m. to the Waterville Regional Communications Center.
Firefighters worked in the cold, which bitter wind made worse.
“It came right across the field there, and it keeps fueling it,” Coughlin said at the scene.
Firefighters used axes to break a hole in the mobile home’s peak to vent the flames, which tore through the roof, eventually causing it to cave in. Black-and-gray smoke came out of the roof and windows, and the wind swept it high into the sky.
The Browns’ son, Jim, and friends ferried items including guns, snowshoes and framed pictures from the end of the mobile home as firefighters passed them through a burned-out window.
Aaron Owens, 35, and Alicia Jones, 30, said they heard about the fire on the police scanner and drove there from their home off West River Road in Waterville. They stood huddling in the cold, watching firefighters work.
Owens said he and Jones live in a mobile home and it seems there have been a lot of mobile home fires lately. He said his father and his stepfather both were firefighters, and he went with them to fires in the middle of the night when he was young.
“It’s a horrible thing to have happen,” Owens said. “Fire is very unpredictable.”
The Waterville Fire Department drove a cascade truck to the scene. The truck contains air that fills firefighters’ air bottles.
No injuries were reported.
Coughlin said just after 7 p.m. that state fire investigator Ken MacMaster had arrived on the scene and then called more officials in to help him determine the cause.
Amy Calder — 861-9247
Twitter: @AmyCalder17
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