St. Albans woods fire continues

ST. ALBANS – Fire crews from eight communities were back on top of St. Albans Mountain on Friday trying to extinguish a woods blaze that simply refused to die.

The fire was first spotted Thursday afternoon but was in such a remote location that fire crews initially had trouble finding it. Firefighters worked well into the night battling the blaze but had to call off their efforts when it became too dark to see, said St. Albans Fire Chief David Crocker.

They were back on the scene after 8 a.m. Friday but again had a challenge extinguishing all of the hot spots, which Crocker said had burned well into the dry, duff-filled ground.

“You’d put it out, move on and then you’d turn around and look and it was going behind you again,” Crocker said.

By the time crews pulled out around 3 p.m., the fire had burned just over 3 acres of St. Albans Mountain, which is located east of Harmony. Crocker said it looked like the fire may have been accidentally set by someone working or burning a campfire on the mountain.

In addition to St. Albans, fire crews from Athens, Cambridge, Harmony, Hartland, Pittsfield, Canaan, Wellington as well as the Maine Forest Service helped fight the fire.

“We’ll have to go back tomorrow and check on it, but we worked it hard today,” Crocker said. By late afternoon a forest ranger who had been monitoring the fire told Crocker that there were six to eight hot spots still burning underground.