Late-night fire damages Chester wood mill

CHESTER – A fire late Wednesday night at Chester Forest Products Inc. caused considerable damage that resulted in a partial shutdown of the wood mill business.

The walls and roof of the maintenance shop, which caught fire late Wednesday night and burned into Thursday morning, looked as if they had melted, but workers nonetheless continued to run machinery out in the lumberyard and in other parts of the wood products company.

“The chip mill is still up and running, but the sawmill will be down for a little bit,” Lincoln Fire Chief Bill Lee said at the fire scene Thursday morning.

A person driving past the company, located on Route 116, reported the fire at 11:48 p.m. Wednesday.

“The maintenance shop was fully involved when we arrived, and that extended into the [adjacent] office building,” Lee said. “We immediately called for mutual aid from Howland, Lee and Burlington.”

Fire crews did salvage some of the mill’s equipment during the fire.

“We were able to save an attached sawmill and all that equipment,” the chief said.

Big flakes of ash still floated in the air around the area at 10 a.m. Thursday as Lee and senior investigator Scott Richardson of the State Fire Marshal’s Office investigated the cause of the fire. Questions remained unanswered later that day, Richardson said. He said fire investigators had yet to determine the cause, but he indicated it might have been the result of an electrical problem.

“We’re still working on it,” he said. “We might go back with an electrical engineer.”

Lee was unsure what the adjacent office was used for or whose office it was. He said approximately 40 firefighters from Lincoln and surrounding communities fought the fire.

“It took about two hours to get under control,” the chief said. “Crews were here until about 6:30 a.m. putting out hot spots and flare-ups.”

The roof of the approximately 40-by-150-foot maintenance building was partially collapsed and visibly damaged by the blaze.

“I’d estimate the total dollar loss as in the hundreds of thousands,” Lee said.

The tools and equipment within the building and the structure are a total loss, he said.

Company officials did not return phone calls Thursday, so exact figures on damage and whether the company was insured could not be determined.

Also unknown are how long the sawmill portion of the mill would be closed and how many employees are affected.

Chester Forest Products, which employs 25 to 40 workers, produces bulk bark mulch, landscaping timbers and ties, pallet stock, pulp chips and two types of wood boards, according to the state of Maine’s Web site on mills in Maine.