On Fire

Thursday night I hosted the prospective new fellow and her husband- as the evening unfolded, it looked like they were going to have a good sampling of what life here is like- dinner, bookclub, volleyball, morning coffee at the cafe. They'd see some faces, and get a sense of the place. After volleyball, we chatted a while in the living room, until realizing it was heading up on 11pm, we retired for the night, with the plan to head out the door to Black Dinah at 7:15 to catch the first batch of doughnuts straight from the fat.

As I went to bed, I saw the first flashes of lightening from across the bay- insistent, bright, and a ways off. A lightening lover, I pulled my curtains back, leaving them open to the show, despite the fact that with my poor vision I would see nothing distinct. It had been a long day, but sleep was slow in coming, and as my mind churned the storm closed in, until it seemed right on top of us- a bolt would blind, and then immediately a crash of thunder would shake the house. Before I finally slipped to sleep in the midst of the crisis, I said my prayers for the island, that we wouldn't lose our civic building like Swan's Island did last year, that we wouldn't lose the church or school, that...

and finally I blacked out.

Only to wake to the ringing of my phone through the pitch black of my bedroom. The sun comes up early, very early, so this was the dead of night.

"Morgan, you're the only one who's answered the phone- the Cogan's house is on fire!"

I looked out my window and down the street toward the school, and sure enough, there was a huge orange glow, flames through the roof.

Not fully awake, I ran downstairs to the phone cabinet, pulled out the volunteer fire department phone tree, and attempted to make sense of it, picked a number, and called. Got the machine.

"Diane, this is Morgan, if you hear this, get up- the Cogan's new house is on fire."

And then, common sense kicked in, and I dialed 911, remembering that important people on island did finally have pagers. Hopefully even charged, turned on, and in earshot. Our dispatch goes through Rockland, and the phone call was very brief: structure fire, on Isle au Haut, right across from the fire station; an unoccupied building that was being renovated.

After calling it in, I got dressed, knocked on the door to the master bedroom, and let the prospective Fellow and her fellow know there was a fire, and that probably it would be all hands on deck, if they were willing to get dressed and pitch in as needed.

People were already arriving when I got there, and the chaos of poor coordination ensued. Pump trucks left untouched wouldn't start and had to be jumped; the tank truck had been emptied but not refilled; none of us had met or trained in a year. The fire chief lives at the other end of the island, and wasn't able to arrive until well into the effort.

A fire on an isolated island isn't as frightening as a fire on a boat, but man it is close. Everyone who arrived at the scene and saw the flames knew it was going to burn to the ground, and that we would be lucky to make sure it didn't spread.

Happily isolated island communities do tend to contain some fairly competant people- so in time (and not so much as it seemed), the effort was pulled together- people who knew what they were doing took charge, and people who didn't stayed out of the way until called on to run errands or hold/carry hose. Despite the difficulties in starting up, the system finally worked- and we pumped water from the stream next to the school into our collapsable 3,000 gallon holding pool; from there it went through the pump truck and fed three 1.5" firehoses. Once we had consistant pressure, and all three hoses, things began to look more hopeful. The wind had died down. The lightening had struck the upstairs and the fire was literally burning down- a slow process. I'd made the 911 call at about 3:30- by 6:30 the fire was under control; by 10:30 the construction crew (who ended up fighting the fire that was consuming their work) began to go in to salvage their tools. While badly burnt, much of the house was still standing.

From what I have heard, the comment thread on the BDN is full of upset mainland firefighters, chastising our guys for fighting with inadequate (read: nonexistant) personal protection equipment; for entering the building while it still smoldered; for venting the roof.

I suspect none of them have lived year round on an unbridged island. We don't have a lot in the way of services, equipment, or specific training. Most everything comes down to a certain amount of common sense and calculated risk taking. In a perfect world, we'd have time to properly organize the department (the nomination for fire chief at town meeting would not be met with a rousing choris of "not it!!!"), we'd have the tanker filled, and the trucks would be run on a weekly basis.

The island is not perfect.

But we got by, and now we know- pretty damned specifically- how we need to get better.

As to the prospective Fellow and her husband, time will tell how they responded to this literal trial by fire.





Photo by John Blaisdell, former resident of the house.