Multiple crews stop wildland fire 20 feet from Penobscot home

Some crews forced to take 40-minute detour to reach fire scene 

Volunteer firefighter Corey Grant, foreground, helps move some of the more than 2,300 feet of hose that was used to contain the May 9 wildland fire in Penobscot. Photo by John Boit.

May 11, 2026

By John Boit

PENOBSCOT— A fast-moving wildland fire burned within 20 feet of a home on May 9 before firefighters from across the Blue Hill Peninsula and surrounding communities stopped the blaze from spreading further, officials said.

The fire at 275 Dunbar Road scorched almost 2.5 acres of woods and drew a large regional response that included 17 trucks and 51 personnel, including firefighters staffing stations on standby in neighboring towns, according to Penobscot Fire Chief James Clarke.

The fire burned within 20 feet of a house on Dunbar Road. Photo courtesy of the Penobscot Fire Department.

The response was complicated by the ongoing Bayview Road closure at Mill Creek in Penobscot, which has effectively cut the town in half. The Penobscot fire station is on the east side of the project, so the volunteer crew has stationed for several weeks one of its fire engines on the west side of the construction site for emergencies.

The construction project has meant that vehicles—both emergency and personal—must take lengthy detours through Orland. It took some fire trucks from nearby towns as long as 40 minutes to reach the scene, Clarke said.

The first call came in at about 3:15 p.m. when a worker at a boatyard across the road spotted smoke in the woods and called 911, according to officials. Clarke was the first on the scene with the fire truck that has been stationed on the west side of the culvert construction project.

Clarke said it quickly became clear the fire had the potential to threaten multiple structures.

“We decided as soon as we got there that we needed to get other trucks rolling immediately because of the length of time it would take for them to get around the detour,” Clarke said. “There were already three structures being threatened — two houses and a garage.”

Clarke said he also became concerned because of the topography—a sloping hill where the fire could spread upward into miles of forest land.

“I knew the length of time it would take the trucks to get there,” Clarke said about the immediate call for mutual aid from five nearby towns called to the scene: Castine, Orland, Bucksport, Blue Hill and Sedgwick. “I was there within five to eight minutes with little to no help, and I knew we needed more resources,” he said.

On standby and covering other stations during the event were Brooklin, Deer Isle, Stonington and Brooksville.

Firefighters ultimately stopped the flames about 20 feet from one structure and roughly 60 feet from another, officials said.

Crews attacked the blaze from multiple directions while establishing a water supply at a nearby pond. In total, firefighters snaked about 2,350 feet of hose across the wooded terrain, while others used hand tools and portable water packs to contain the fire, Clarke said. Firefighters remained at the scene until about 5:15 p.m., followed by roughly 90 minutes of cleanup operations.

Officials said the fire began after property clearing work in the area that included brush burning. No injuries were reported, and no structures were damaged in the fire.

“We believe it just smoldered underground and then resurfaced,” Clarke said of the fire’s origins.

The Penobscot Fire Department posted on its Facebook page that burn permits by residential homeowners had been suspended while the culvert project was underway, but that a “glitch” in the system had inadvertently given the homeowner on Dunbar Road the go-ahead to burn brush.

Clarke said local burn permits had previously been suspended because of dry conditions and the road closure but the glitch apparently gave the go-ahead for the burn. All permits have since been suspended again, Clarke said.

The area where fire officials believe a brush fire smoldered underground until reemerging and burning almost 2.5 acres in Penobscot. Photo courtesy of the Penobscot Fire Department.

“The moment I hear the road is open, the permits can be turned back on,” he said. The road closure is expected to last through May 20, town officials have said.

Just hours before the fire at Castine’s town meeting, Castine select board chair Dan Leader closed out the annual meeting of voters with a shout out to firefighters who battled a large wildland fire last summer near the Castine/Penobscot town line. That fire took three days to extinguish with crews from more than a dozen fire departments, a Maine Forest Service helicopter, and a bulldozer that cleared a fire break through the woods responding.

“When I saw…the damage, it really took my breath away,” Leader said of the August 2025 blaze, adding his thanks to local firefighters “for keeping this town safe.”

(Full disclosure: The reporter on this story, John Boit, is a volunteer with the Penobscot Fire Department.)