An early Wednesday morning fire destroyed a home at 78 Berry Road in Wayne. The home owned by Vicki Tully housed Tully, her seven children and several pets. Some of the pets did not survive the fire. Photo by Amy MacMillan

WAYNE — A mother and her seven children escaped an early Wednesday morning fire that destroyed their home at 78 Berry Road. The home was owned by Vicki Tully.

One of the children, Haven, 15, woke the rest of the family up after the fire had started and helped them evacuate. No injuries were reported.

Initial investigators on the scene found the fire was likely accidental, Wayne Fire Chief Taylor Stevenson said. The fire, he said, started in a garage attached to the house.

An early Wednesday morning fire destroyed a home at 78 Berry Road in Wayne. The home owned by Vicki Tully housed Tully, her seven children and several pets. Some of the pets did not survive the fire. Photo by Amy MacMillan

The Wayne Fire Department received a call about the fire at 12:56 a.m. and cleared the scene at 7:40 a.m. The department’s mutual aid partners in Readfield, Fayette, Mount Vernon, Vienna, Winthrop and Livermore Falls also responded to the fire.

A nearby barn that housed the family’s three horses was not impacted by the fire. The horses escaped the barn during the fire, but were later found safe. The family’s two goats, three of their seven dogs, three of their six barn cats and one of their three house cats survived the fire.

Stevenson said a nearby resident with an excavator helped clear some of the structure while the fire was still ongoing, a standard practice in older buildings that are unlikely to recover from the fire. Though the fire started in the garage, he said, it had spread to the rest of the house and was difficult to extinguish without knocking through the building.

A GoFundMe set up by Amy MacMillan for the Tully family’s recovery had raised more than $4,600 from 67 donations by Thursday afternoon.