Wanda Campbell of Washburn is losing her job of eight months at the Fraser-owned sawmill at Masardis. It’s not closing, but a worker from the Ashland mill slated for closure has seniority and will take her job. Her husband, Ron, works at the same mill and may get bumped from his job too.

“This affects everything,” Wanda Campbell said. “We are still thinking [about] what we will do. Everything is costing more – food, fuel, the possible loss of health insurance. It will be an even tougher winter than we were facing [already].”

A total of 72 Fraser workers will lose their jobs in Ashland for up to four months because of low lumber prices caused by the weakened U.S. housing market and lumber imports, according to an announcement made Jan. 16. The duration of the closure will be determined by the market conditions. The mill was to close once current log supplies were processed. The company said the Masardis mill would not be affected.

In addition to sawmills in Ashland and Masardis, Fraser Papers owns a paper mill in Madawaska and operates a paper mill in Millinocket.

It’s much the same for people who work for J.D. Irving Forest Products just a few miles north of Ashland. Irving announced on Jan. 17 that it would close Pinkham Sawmill at Nashville Plantation, displacing another 73 workers indefinitely effective Jan. 31. The company blamed the slump in the U.S. housing market, which has stressed a lot of companies in the lumber business, and competition from lumber imports. The Irving mill had been operating on reduced shifts, about three days a week. The company was looking into placing at least some workers at its other sites.

The closure of the two logging mill operations will affect nearly 145 workers along the Route 11 corridor from Patten to Fort Kent. Workers from the 100-mile-long area have been driving to their jobs, often car-pooling to cut costs.

The Campbells, who are in their 30s and have one child, know the possibility of finding other jobs is slim in the northern Maine market, especially jobs that pay the wages they were earning at the sawmill.

“Moving south may be an option,” she said. “It’s hard on everyone.”

Artemus Coffin can relate to that sentiment. He is a 64-year-old worker with 33 years’ experience at the Pinkham Mill who now has his layoff papers. He didn’t know last week how he and his wife, Rosemary, would face the future without health insurance. They won’t be able to afford the COBRA insurance the company has offered them. COBRA, an acronym for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, allows workers whose jobs are terminated for certain reasons to purchase health insurance through the company at the group rate for a period of time.

“Health insurance will be the biggest thing,” he said. “The cost of that is higher than the unemployment benefits we will be receiving.”

The maximum workers may receive for unemployment is $331 a week. That’s before taxes, according to Coffin.

He hasn’t been in the job market since 1975 and wonders whether the mill will reopen once it’s closed.

“This will be a very tough winter for many of us,” he said. “I don’t know how we, and others like us, will make it.”

He and his wife have part-time jobs, but the cost of living will be higher than what they will bring in. He said the heating oil tank is getting low, and a good supply of wood pellets goes quickly in the cold the area has been experiencing.

The union will try to aid workers, and a rapid response team from Augusta is expected to help. He said the company has made no offers of additional assistance or given any real indication of how long the shutdown could last.

Ron Beaulieu, manager of the Fraser sawmills at Masardis and Ashland, also was feeling the bitterness of the action last week.

“It’s not easy closing mills,” Beaulieu said. “People are taking it very hard, and so am I. This is a pretty rough thing for these families to go through.

“We are not even sure this will be only four months,” he continued. “These are 72 people we are talking about. That’s a lot of families, from Fort Kent to Patten.”

He said the company’s Masardis mill is staying open because it is losing less money, and the wood chips it produces are needed for the company’s pulp mills.

Before the closure plans, Beaulieu said, the Ashland mill was working one shift five days a week and Masardis was using two shifts five days a week. He said the problem is that the market for sawn lumber is not very good. Other mills are having trouble as well, he said.

Beaulieu hopes the closures may bring up lumber prices so the mills can reopen. The company then will face the challenge of whether there will be workers around for hiring.

Ashland Town Manager Jim Gardner hopes people will remain optimistic. He said the Fraser closure was expected, but the Irving closure came out of the blue. More than 20 percent of the layoffs are people from the SAD 32 area, Ashland and three other communities.

“Fraser plans to be part of the landscape for a long time, but we don’t have any indications from Irving,” Gardner said. “There is no temporary label on the Irving plan.”

Gardner said the two closures would have a trickle-down effect in the community, including retail businesses and loggers.

“The impact of the two closures is awful. … This hurts all the way around,” he said. “If I wasn’t such an optimistic person, it would be even sadder. We have to stay positive.”

Gardner fears the closures may affect an SAD 32 school building project that voters will consider Jan. 31. He hopes it won’t because the town had been growing recently and industry is part of that.

“One good thing about Ashland is that people pull together, especially in tragic times,” Gardner said.

Taxpayers in SAD 32, which encompasses Ashland, Portage Lake, Masardis, Garfield and Oxbow, must either fix serious problems including mold and asbestos in the old school buildings or build a new school. The district has the necessary approvals in hand, except for a final vote by residents, which it hopes to get Thursday.

Gardner said it would cost taxpayers more to try to repair the old buildings than to build a new school.

In the meantime, the Maine congressional delegation is looking for ways to assist the workers who are losing their jobs.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud called the closures “terrible news” and was seeking assistance for them from the U.S. Department of Labor through the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.

Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins urged U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao to consider promptly any Trade Adjustment Assistance applications for workers at the two mills last week. TAA funds are available to workers who have become unemployed because of direct competition from imports.