PORTLAND — 1993 was Maine’s second-safest year on record in terms of highway fatalities, while fire deaths for the year were about average, authorities said.
There were 183 highway fatalities as of Thursday, marking only the third time that the total came in below 200, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Public Safety Department.
Twenty-seven people died in fires, which is about average for Maine, McCausland said.
The number of highway deaths was second only to 166 in 1982, McCausland said. The only other below-200 year was 1989, when there were 191 fatalities. The five-year average is about 220.
The year’s worst highway crash came in October when a tractor-trailer truck ran over a parked carload of teen-agers on the Maine Turnpike in Falmouth, killing four of them and injuring a fifth.
The teens were on their way to a “haunted hayride” when the car driven by Jeff Izer, 17, of Lisbon broke down alongside the turnpike.
State police determined that the truck driver, Robert Hornbarger, 48, of Clearville, Pa., had doctored his travel log and hadn’t had enough sleep before the accident.
The 27 fatal fires compared with a 10-year average of 32, McCausland said. The all-time low was 14 in 1991, while the worst year was 1967 when 70 fire deaths were recorded, the spokesman said.
The leading cause of fatal fires this year was smoking, said state Fire Marshal Dennis Lundstedt. Other leading causes were misuse of heating appliances and fuels, and carelessness in general.
The only arson fatality involved a 10-year-old girl who was charged with manslaughter for allegedly starting a fire on Aug. 13. A 2-year-old boy died of injuries sustained in that fire.
Other fires claimed three lives each in Augusta and New Sweden.
The fire that killed a mother and her two children in Augusta was linked to a burner on the stove, and the fire that killed a mother and two of her daughters in New Sweden was attributed to an electrical problem.
The number of fires decreased substantially in the 1980s with an increase in smoke detectors, stricter building codes and fire prevention programs, the state fire marshal said.
Lundstedt said he has pushed to make apartments safer by requiring smoke detectors to be wired into the electrical systems by Jan. 1, 1995, so tenants won’t be caught with dead batteries.
As for highway deaths, the percentage related to alcohol was expected to be between 35 percent and 38 percent, a major decrease from 60 percent in 1980 and 1981, McCausland said.
Police aren’t sure whether a motorist who tried to evade police in East Eddington was legally drunk in a September crash that killed three people and injured five others.
The Camaro that was being chased by state troopers collided with an oncoming vehicle carrying a Bangor neurosurgeon, Dr. John Duckworth III, his girlfriend and his three daughters.
The doctor and the occupants of the Camaro were killed in the crash. Both occupants of the Camaro had alcohol in their bloodstreams, although only one of them was legally drunk.
The state has maintained detailed records of fire deaths since 1950 and of highway deaths since 1944.
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