EASTPORT – A fire Wednesday engulfed a Washington County convenience store and gasoline station, sending flames high into the early morning sky and forcing employees and customers to flee into the parking lot.

It started just before 5 a.m. at the Irving Mainway store on Washington Street.

“I smelled something and went into the back room and saw [the fire] and tried to extinguish it with a fire extinguisher,” store manager Bob Bore said. Unable to put the fire out, Bore was able to get everyone safely out of the store. No one was injured, but the fire left four full-time and five part-time employees jobless.

City Manager George “Bud” Finch, who also is a firefighter, said the fire might have started near one of the store’s compressors and spread from there.

Eastport police Officer Frank Gardner said that as he came up Washington Street “I had noticed the smoke and as soon as I got up here by the Irving I could see the manager out in the dooryard,” he said. “[Bore] flagged me down. He’d already called 911. The smoke was rolling right out the front door and it was pretty well fully involved.”

Gardner called Police Chief Matt Vinson who helped with traffic control.

Firefighters were on the scene within minutes and focused their efforts on the outside of the building.

“It had a flat roof so I didn’t dare put anyone on the roof [because of the danger so] we waited for it to come out through [the roof] before we dare go inside,” Fire Chief Richard Clark said.

Twenty minutes after the fire started, flames exploded through the roof and charred embers rained down on firefighters. Within minutes there was a loud explosion inside. Clark said he believed it was connected to the gas appliances. “Everything they cooked with was with gas,” he said. The convenience store also served sandwiches and other food.

Clark said he wasn’t concerned about the nearby gasoline pumps because the fire had tripped the main breaker inside the store and shut the pumps down. But he was concerned about a propane storage unit outside the store, and soon after firefighters arrived they removed the filled tanks away from the store.

More hoses were connected to hydrants and firefighters dumped thousands of gallons of water onto the fire.

When Rocky Archer, who works for the Passamaquoddy Water District, heard about the fire he rushed to the water plant in Perry. “We get called out for the water department, for excess water usage when the fire department hooks to a hydrant,” he explained. “I turned the volume of the pumps from 350 gallons per minute to 450 gallons per minute. …They pumped a substantial amount of water on the fire.”

Neighbor Rick Green heard the call on the scanner. “I thought they were talking about a different Irving,” he said. “I thought it may be the one up to Calais that may be on fire.”

As soon as he learned the fire was just a few hundred feet from where he lived; he and his family evacuated their house. A trailer behind the convenience store also was evacuated.

By 6 a.m. firefighters had most of the fire under control, and by 9 a.m. they had removed the front of the building and carried the store’s safe out. Firefighters and Bore also picked up coins that had blown through the roof with the flames and were buried in soot on the driveway.

Finch said he planned to meet with Irving personnel from Bangor to talk about the future. “We certainly hope their plans are to rebuild possibly bigger and better,” he said.

Perry firefighters assisted at the scene.

The fire remains under investigation.

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