Accounts to aid families whose houses burned

LUBEC – Town residents stand ready to help two families who lost their homes early Monday morning to a raging fire.

Bank accounts have been opened at Bar Harbor Savings Bank in Lubec in the name of Bruce and Susan Davis and Jeanne Mills where donations can be sent, town officials said Tuesday.

“Everyone will help them; we’ll hold fundraisers,” said neighbor Sherry McGonigal.

Meanwhile, the State Fire Marshal’s Office, stretched by the number of fires around the state, is expected to send someone to Lubec sometime Wednesday. The cause of the fire remains unknown.

The fire at the home of Bruce and Susan Davis at Main Street and Horror Hill was reported around 4:40 a.m. Monday.

When firefighters arrived minutes later, the house was in flames. The fire station is less than a block away. Firefighters immediately began efforts to quell the flames and save the Doug Moore home just feet away.

They lost the battle moments later when a propane tank behind the Davis home exploded, sending the lower half of the tank flying through the air like a missile, narrowly missing five firefighters. The concussion also blew out windows at neighboring houses.

John and Sherry McGonigal had a front row seat to the fire. Their house was across the street from the burning buildings. They awoke to the smell of smoke. At first they thought it was a neighbor’s wood stove.

“I looked out the window; it was about a quarter after 4,” said John McGonigal. “I saw a light on in the basement.” At first the family thought it might be a cellar light the Davises had left on. The family was in Bangor for basketball tournament week.

But John McGonigal thought there was something different about the light. He said that when he looked more closely, he saw the glow.

The couple’s son, Ryan, called 911.

“Before he finished the telephone call, the flames were coming up the second floor and blew the window right out, so it must have been going for a while before we saw it,” John McGonigal said.

Sherry McGonigal agreed. “We were staring just about like we were looking for Santa Claus or something and all of a sudden it just blew right through the roof,” she added.

Firefighters were on the scene within minutes. As they battled to save the neighbor’s house, there was a huge explosion. The propane tank behind the Davis house exploded. “Donnie Alley was pulling one of the hoses and when that blew it knocked him sideways and the hose was pointed right at his butt and he got soaked,” McGonigal said.

The concussion blew the side window out of McGonigal’s house. It also blew a hole in the side of the Doug Moore residence three feet away. The Moore house also went up in flames.

Sherry McGonigal said the concussion from the propane tank explosion broke some antique bottles in a neighbor’s window.

Jeanne Mills, who rents the Moore house, was not home, but her son James was able to escape the fire. “When the flames started, my son Ryan banged on the door. He got [James] up and he got out,” she said.

Fearing another explosion, she said her other son Leo and her nephew Donnie Farrell rushed to remove the propane tank from behind the Moore house. “After that one blew, they got [the tank] off this [house] just in case,” Sherry McGonigal said, pointing at the remains of the Moore house.

She said everyone pitched in to help battle the fire.

Houses on either side of the Davis and Moore houses were undamaged.