Firefighters battle a house fire on Waterville Road in Skowhegan Thursday. The home was destroyed. Its owner, Janusz Jankiewicz, 80, died Friday morning from severe burns. Jake Freudberg/Morning Sentinel

SKOWHEGAN — A man has died from his injuries sustained from a fire that destroyed his home on Waterville Road Thursday.

Janusz Jankiewicz, 80, died Friday morning from severe burns, his son, Krzysztof Jankiewicz, 45, of Toronto, said.

Jankiewicz was taken by LifeFlight Thursday from Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan to MaineHealth Medical Center in Portland, where he died.

The fire broke out in his home at 706 Waterville Road around 3 p.m. By 4:30 p.m., the home was almost destroyed from the flames.

Lt. Aaron Turcotte, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said via email Friday that the Office of State Fire Marshal is investigating the cause of the fire.

Krzysztof Jankiewicz speculated the fire might have started from the kitchen based on photos he saw and because it was too warm Thursday to use the furnace.

“My dad didn’t use electric heaters or anything and the weather has been warm,” he said. “There’s no reason why he would have turned the furnace on, but it also provides hot water. There could be an issue with the furnace, or maybe something that happened in the kitchen. I don’t know if we’ll ever know.”

Jankiewicz said his family immigrated to Skowhegan from Poland and that his father lived alone after Joanna Jankiewicz, Krzysztof’s mother and Janusz’s wife, died in 2009 from cancer. As the youngest of three children, Krzysztof Jankiewicz said he remembers moving into the home on Waterville Road when he was 14.

Janusz Jankiewicz in 1983

“I believe we purchased it around then,” he said. “I remember taking the bus to my freshman year of high school for the first time from there.”

Janusz Jankiewicz was featured in an article in the Nov. 10, 1983, edition of the Morning Sentinel detailing his place as a popular speaker and labor union representative in his native Poland. He moved to the United States, he said, because he faced political persecution in his home country.

Turcotte said the fire marshal’s office is reminding people that Maine is moving into the heating season, and that people should change their smoke detector batteries and service their heating equipment, and have an exit plan in the event of an emergency,