Fire razes Houlton landmark 3 businesses destroyed; man charged with arson

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HOULTON – A Houlton man has been arrested and charged with arson in connection with a fire early Wednesday morning that destroyed a 137-year-old downtown building, leaving two people homeless and demolishing three businesses.

Mark Antworth, 39, was arrested late Wednesday afternoon after being questioned by state fire investigators.

Antworth, who was sentenced in 1995 for armed robbery, was taken to the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton, where he was being held pending his appearance today in 2nd District Court in Houlton.

More than 40 firefighters from surrounding towns battled the fire in the 41/2-story building, sometimes known as the Smith building, that housed a church outreach center and two apartments.

There were no injuries. A municipal front-end loader was brought in late Wednesday afternoon to push debris off the streets and away from other buildings. Firefighters still were at the scene Wednesday evening wetting down debris.

Antworth had been seen Wednesday morning by Houlton police in the area of the fire at 1 Market Square before and after the fire was discovered about 1:15 a.m. by Officer Matthew Quint of the Houlton Police Department, according to Sgt. Stu Jacobs of the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

The suspect also reportedly had been in the building before the fire occurred and asked a resident if there were any apartments for rent, Jacobs said.

Houlton police and state fire investigators on Wednesday afternoon executed a criminal search warrant at the boarding home on Leonard Street in Houlton where Antworth lived.

Evidence was recovered and will be sent for testing to the arson section of the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory in Augusta, Jacobs said.

Houlton police found evidence at the fire scene, including a can of lantern fuel, that led fire officials to suspect from the beginning that the fire was intentionally set.

Investigators now are looking at several other early-morning fires that occurred over the summer in Houlton, including one that leveled a vacant three-story house next door to where Antworth lived, to determine if he might have been involved, according to Jacobs.

In 1995, Antworth pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to three years in prison with all but 10 months suspended and three years of probation.

According to a published report, Antworth in July 1994 entered the lobby of the Northeastland Hotel in Presque Isle with a paper-bag mask over his head and pulled a gun on the desk clerk. The weapon, according to a police report, was an unloaded pellet gun.

Antworth didn’t get any money and left before police arrived.

Jacobs praised Houlton police for their handling of Wednesday’s incident.

“Not only did they look out for the safety of the occupants, but they also protected valuable evidence that has given us very significant leads,” the investigator said. “Those leads helped us identify [Antworth].”

After reporting the fire, Officers Quint and Mark Ganzel began evacuating the burning building as well as apartments in two adjacent buildings.

Rebecca Donahue, whose grandson was visiting her, lived in one of the apartments in the destroyed building and is thought to be staying with relatives in Houlton. Another person whose name wasn’t available was living in a second apartment, but spent the night elsewhere and wasn’t home at the time of the fire.

The fire started in a small entryway into the basement at the rear of the building, which faces the town square.

Houlton firefighters initially tried to fight the blaze from inside the building, but after less than an hour they were forced to go outside to make a defensive attack, commonly referred to as “surround and drown.”

“The fire progressed to the point where the building was totally involved due to the amount of time it had been burning,” Houlton Fire Chief Milton Cone said. “We had to be concerned about building collapse.”

The building was built in 1865, and its construction did not include fire stops in the walls. That allowed the fire to move quickly to the top floors, Cone said.

Hidden spaces in the structure from numerous renovations over the years also made it difficult for firefighters to get to the flames as they moved through the building, the fire chief said.

The firefighters, who came from Houlton, Hodgdon and Linneus, used high-volume water devices and an aerial ladder truck to attack the fire and protect nearby structures. At the height of the fire, they were using an estimated 5,000 gallons of water a minute.

In the early stages of the fire, smoke slowly drifted over the building. As the fire intensified, the smoke darkened and rolled in dense clouds out of the storefronts and seeped out of the eaves. Fire eventually consumed the entire structure, gnawing at boards that covered the windows before burning through in a blast of flame, smoke and heat that warped vinyl siding on a store across the street.

About 3:30 a.m., the L-shaped building was engulfed in flames. At 4 a.m., the west wall collapsed into the street, followed seconds later by the north wall.

A large plume of white smoke from the smoldering building went several hundred feet into the air after firefighters poured water on the structure.

Early in the morning there were a few onlookers, but toward the daylight hours more people arriving at work stopped to watch and take pictures of the fire scene.

No estimate of the damage was available Wednesday. Town records show that the larger building located at 1 Market Square was valued at about $54,000. The smaller building at 6 Kendall St., part of the L-shape, was valued at $18,000.

Donald Goodridge of Houlton, the buildings’ owner, said Wednesday he didn’t have an estimate of the damage. The building was not insured.

Firefighters were able to save two adjacent buildings. The former J.C. Penney building, located about 8 feet away in Market Square, had some smoke damage and water damage in the basement.

The Smith building housed the Revival Outreach Center church and two apartments. Something Old Antiques on Kendall Street, about 10 feet away, also was saved, but sustained some smoke damage, according to owner Gary Schillinger.

Over the years, the building has housed a Masonic Lodge and an assortment of businesses, including a clothing store and a shoe store, a bank, a radio station and the Aroostook Mental Health Center.

One of the businesses destroyed in the Smith building was Downtown Mattress, owned by Darrell Williams of Amity.

“We were going to open this morning,” Williams said of his new business, as he surveyed the destruction. “I was going to get [insurance] this morning.”

Williams said he lost inventory with a retail value of about $2,800. He said, however, that not all of his stock was in the store and he already was looking for a new location.

“We’re going to reopen,” he said.

The other businesses that were destroyed were a beauty salon and a taxi service.