State: Camp blaze started in fire ring

ROBBINSTON – District Ranger Jeff Currier of the Maine Forest Service said Tuesday night that an investigator with the State Fire Marshal’s Office confirmed that the fire that burned a camp and 131 acres of forestland Sunday began in a fire ring near the camp.

“It then burned on the surface of the ground or underground and caught the camp on fire and then traveled farther into the woods,” Currier added.

The 25-year-old camp was located on Howard Lake about five miles off Ridge Road. The camp belonged to Billie Jo Hamm and her brother Scott Johnson. They have not been at the camp in the past few months.

Currier said witnesses saw people in the area.

“They saw a party of people on the lake on Saturday in that general vicinity. These people were seen in an aluminum boat. They were described as a group of younger people, nothing specific about clothing or anything like that, nor an accurate [count of the] number of people,” he said.

The Maine Forest Service is asking for the public’s help in locating the individuals.

“Our goal would be to talk to those people to find out what happened,” he said. “They might have seen something. If they were involved our next step would be to find out if this was an accident or something else,” he said.

Currier confirmed the fire ring simply could have been used to cook hot dogs on the shore.

“I hate to think that people would assume that it was an intentional act, I am not making that assumption, nor should anyone else. This could have been an accident that happened and we deal with accidents of course in a different way than we would with something intentional,” he said.

The fire began around noon Sunday.

Firefighters from Robbinston were at the scene within minutes, but the camp had already burned to the ground and the fire was spreading quickly into the woods, fueled by dry conditions and gusty winds.

Robbinston Fire Chief Bob Merrill called for backup, and crews from Calais to Dennysville responded. The Maine Forest Service sent crews and helicopters. There were also crews from the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge and the Downeast Correctional Facility in Bucks Harbor.

They were able to get the fire under control by Sunday night, but crews remained on-site throughout the night putting out hot spots. More hot spots were extinguished Monday.

Currier said he flew over the fire scene Tuesday and said things looked good. “The crews are really working hard,” he said. There were 40 firefighters working the line Tuesday.

The forest ranger said he plans to scale back some of the staffing today. “We can always ramp back up fairly quickly over the next few days,” he said, if the fire were to start up again.

Anyone with information about how the fire may have started should call the Wildlife Arson Report number at 1-800-987-0257. All calls are confidential.