March 29, 2024
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Woman uses hose to save burning father

LEE – An Arab Road man suffered second-degree burns before he was saved by his quick-thinking daughter when an explosion and subsequent fire leveled his repair garage on Monday.

Mark Stevens Sr., 45, was underneath a junk car trying to remove its gasoline tank at 481 Arab Road shortly after 1:30 p.m. Stevens and his daughter Elizabeth Stevens weren’t aware the tank contained any gasoline, she said. But it leaked a puddle and the fumes were thick along the garage floor when something ignited, the 21-year-old Lincoln woman said.

“There was just a poof! And it all ignited. I wasn’t even two feet from him when it happened,” she said Monday. “It burned so fast that my pants caught fire and the bottom of my shoes started to melt.”

On fire, her father leaped from underneath the car, ran outside and threw himself to the ground in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Elizabeth grabbed a garage garden hose and doused the flames on her father and herself before he took the hose and splashed his scalp, she said.

“He was crying out in pain,” Elizabeth said.

She doesn’t know why it happened, but Elizabeth suspects that a jack supporting the car that she was cranking down accidentally sparked the blaze.

With her father no longer on fire but the garage very quickly burning, Elizabeth said she tried briefly to stop her father, a mechanic and professional detail cleaner, from fighting the flames before she ran to get her uncle Glenn Stevens at his house next door.

All the Stevenses tried to fight the fire and get Elizabeth’s car, a loaner Pontiac Sunbird, away from the flames but it was parked too close to the garage and started to melt, she said, blaming her leaving the keys on a workbench inside the garage for their inability to move the car.

Mark Stevens’ nephew Nathan Stevens called the Lee Volunteer Fire Department and reported the fire. When firefighters arrived several minutes later, the garage was almost totally consumed by flames and beginning to fall in on itself, Lee Fire Chief Jay Crocker said.

“The tank basically blew up in his face. He’s very lucky to be alive,” Crocker said. “When we got here, there was about as much left of it [the garage] as you see now.”

Crocker immediately radioed for mutual aid from Springfield and Lincoln, and about 10 firefighters from each of those departments went to the scene along with about 10 town firefighters, but the garage was almost immediately destroyed by the flames, he said.

“It was all gone in about 15 minutes,” Crocker said.

The prospect of losing the garage was so devastating to the elder Stevens that Nathan Stevens and the others had to convince him to go to the hospital. Elizabeth thought her father might also have been in shock when Nathan drove him to Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln.

The elder Stevens suffered second-degree burns to his arms and a third-degree burn to his right ear, Elizabeth said. Lesser burns covered parts of his scalp, chest and legs. He remained hospitalized under observation at the hospital overnight Monday with a good prognosis for a full recovery.

“They said he might lose his hearing in his right ear,” Elizabeth Stevens said, “but he should be fine if it doesn’t get infected.”

Glenn Stevens’ wife, Lorna, credited Elizabeth with saving her father’s life. “If she wouldn’t have been there it could have been much worse,” she said.

Four vehicles were destroyed as well as the 40-by-28-foot garage, Crocker said, but Elizabeth doesn’t consider that as important as the lives that were saved.

“It was very scary,” she said. “You don’t realize how blessed you are to get out of something like that until it’s over.”


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