WASHBURN -- Local firemen maintained a night and day vigil over two fire damaged strings of potato houses here Sunday night and Monday, and twice had to extinguish a flare of flames Monday.
Fire destroyed four houses on a six-house string and badly damaged a fifth Sunday. With flames jumping across railroad tracks, a large two-door house ignited and also was badly damaged. Fire Chief Jasper Umphrey said Monday that the fire started in the empty third house of the string, but did not know the cause.
Two of the four houses were partially filled with potatoes; the other two were empty, he said. The building on the other side of the tracks also contained some potatoes.
Because there are a number of people who either owned the houses or had potatoes stored, Chief Umphrey said he has not made an estimate of the loss. Some 15,000 barrels of potatoes were destroyed in the first string of houses, and an unknown amount in the second.
The town's water supply could not produce water at a sufficient rate, and firemen pumped water from a brook-fed pond into a hydrant and the town's system, chief Umphrey reported.
"If it hadn't been for that we would have lost both strings of potato houses plus a few dwellings." he said.
In one building owned by Hanford Duncan, potatoes stored belonged to Carroll Plissey and Rodney Drake. Freeman Corey owned one of the houses with potatoes in it, and Milford and Herman MacHatten owned the empty buildings. Plissey and Rodney Drake own the buildings at the end.
Herman and Warren Doody own the house and potatoes on the opposite side of the tracks, Chief Umphrey said.
The fire chief said he believed the properties were insured.
The 18 men of the Washburn Fire Department were aided Sunday by men from Presque Isle and Caribou.
[March 1972]