March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Fire destroys recycling center> Van Buren improvises with dumpsters until new facility is built

VAN BUREN — A pair of one-time potato houses, one of which served as the town’s recycling center and transfer station, burned to the ground in an early morning fire Friday.

The town was leasing roughly two-thirds of one of the buildings as the focal point of its garbage handling operation, Fire Chief Chanel Bouchard said Friday. Destroyed in the fire were the town’s trash handling and recycling equipment and some other machinery being stored there, including two generators, each valued at $6,500, which the town purchased in anticipation of centralizing and improving its emergency dispatching operations, according to David Wylie, grant administrator.

Town officials were still working on the inventory of what was lost in the fire and did not expect to have a total accounting until Monday.

The rest of that building and parts of the other — about 20 feet away — were used by various individuals who kept snowmobiles, tires, furniture and an assortment of other items, which were also destroyed.

All that remained of the two buildings owned by Michael Ouellette were the foundation of one and a jumbled mass of burnt timbers for the other.

Dumpsters for trash and crates for recyclable materials were set up at the site hours after the fire, which was reported at 3:15 a.m. Town Manager Clare Dever said the containers, put there to accommodate townspeople, were a temporary fix. The town is reviewing what options it has for another building, which would be needed until the town’s proposed composting-recycling facility is built.

The fire on Champlain Street was well under way by the time it was reported by a passing motorist, said Fire Chief Bouchard, and nothing could be done to save it. However, fire crews were able to save a building four feet away from one of the burning potato houses.

Bouchard said “tons” of recyclable materials — newsprint, glass and metal among them — also burned in the fire. Gutted but still standing was a small office building the town built next to the potato house.

The fire’s heat was so intense that it melted railroad ties inside the building into wavelike shapes. The plastic bubble atop a truck some 75 yards away from the building melted and the truck’s paint blistered in the heat.

Thirty-five firefighters with five trucks and a tanker had the fire under control within an hour of their arrival. Van Buren firefighters were assisted by their colleagues from St. Leonard, New Brunswick, dispatched under the provisions of an automatic aid agreement for structural fires.

No injuries were reported in connection with the fire.

Bouchard said damages were still being assessed and that it might be some time before the total is known. He said the buildings were insured but that it did not appear that the contents were.

The state fire marshal has been asked to investigate the cause of the fire, the chief said.


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