ANDOVER — Fire that gutted the attic of a modified mobile home on Friday night was caused by heat from the chimney flue radiating to combustible materials in the attic, fire Chief Rob Dixon said late Tuesday afternoon.
The mobile home at 926 South Arm Road is owned by Leo R. Blais, 74. Dixon said neither Blais nor firefighters were injured. Firefighters were hampered by deep snow and the metal roof of the mobile home once they got through a pitched wooden roof.
The interior of the home, which wasn’t insured, sustained heavy water damage, Dixon said.
At 5 p.m. Friday, a 911 dispatcher in Paris sent Andover and Rumford firefighters and Med-Care Ambulance to an attic fire at the address. Also sent were tankers from Dixfield, Mexico, Peru and Roxbury to shuttle water to the fire.
The first Andover firefighters arrived in 12 minutes because the home is distant from the Andover fire station, Dixon said. They saw brownish smoke coming from the left gable and gray smoke coming from the right gable of the 12-by-75-foot mobile home. Smoke also was coming from the eaves on all sides.
Dixon said the mobile home had been extensively modified to the point that there was almost a shell built around the mobile home.
“When we first got there, but before we got the first line in place, fire did break through the roof,” he said.
Blais, Dixon said, met him on the outside of the porch.
“He was rather irate while I was trying to do my size-up,” Dixon said, “And then he went into the burning house and I followed him in to get him out and he used colorful language and said, ‘No.’ So I said, ‘We can’t do anything until you’re outside,’ because our first priority is life safety.”
Dixon radioed dispatch and requested a deputy sheriff, telling the dispatcher that the homeowner refused to come out of the burning house. After the man did, Dixon said they erected ladders and went to work on the fire.
They achieved a “good knockdown” with the first line on one side and kept the fire confined to the attic, but couldn’t reach the fire due to the metal roof under the pitched wooden roof.
“We couldn’t do an interior attack, because we had to get through the metal roof, so we kept it contained, but it took us forever to get the metal roof peeled up,” Dixon said. “That’s what took so long, trying to make sure (the fire) was out.”
He said it was almost like a chimney fire that caused the attic fire, in that the home was constructed in such a way that heat radiating from the chimney flue ignited combustible materials in the attic.
Additionally, there was a delay in calling the fire in to the Andover department because the homeowner tried to extinguish it himself, Dixon said.
Blais is staying with friends down the road, Dixon said. Dixon released the remaining fire department units at 10 p.m.
He said he wasn’t aware that at 10:45 p.m., Oxford County Deputy Sheriff George Cayer arrested Blais on charge of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, according to booking and arrest logs.
Dixon said that Blais never wielded a firearm toward him or firefighters when refusing to leave the burning home and believes the arrest was incidental to the fire.
Cayer took Blais to the Oxford County Jail, where he was later released on bail and will be arraigned on May 5 in Oxford County Superior Court in Paris.
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