Recent fires at unoccupied residential properties in Ellsworth could be a symptom of how homeless people have been affected by the bitter cold over the past month.
Ellsworth Fire Chief Scott Guillerault said it’s “highly likely or possible” that a homeless person in need of shelter could have caused the city’s recent blazes, though the matters remain under investigation.
The Ellsworth fire department, with the assistance of the state’s fire marshal’s office, is investigating two vacant house fires that occurred eleven days apart. No injuries were reported at either of the fires.
Reports of people finding warmth in vacant buildings, and then causing fires, have cropped up across the country, from Texas to Connecticut. It is unclear whether that’s the case in Ellsworth and Bangor — where two other similar fires occurred in January — but it’s a documented pattern that appears nationwide when temperatures drop and shelters fill up.
“Is it highly likely or possible? Yeah, I would say so. It’s a matter of opportunity – other parts of the country are seeing the same thing where the unhoused are seeking vacant structures or things like that in order to get out of the elements,” Guillerault said.
Homelessness in the region has risen in recent years. As an affordable housing shortage has contributed to that hike, Bangor City Council said it would prioritize housing initiatives and a homelessness strategy in 2026. In the more rural areas of Hancock County, homeless service providers say they’ve seen a surge in demand for affordable housing since the pandemic.
The average low temperature for the Bangor area in January was 8.2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service. The day of Ellsworth’s second vacant house fire in under two weeks, temperatures dropped to -9 degrees Fahrenheit.
Guillerault cautioned against jumping to conclusions and exclusively blaming homeless community members, noting young people are frequently behind vacant structure fires. From the fire department’s standpoint, the chief said, the city’s January fires appear to be “one-off” incidents and homeless people seeking refuge have not been “a big issue.”
There are many variables that can lead to a vacant house fire: not all empty homes have their power shut off and unoccupied properties seem to invite “critters,” Guillerault said. People escaping the cold is just one of many possible reasons, he said.
Reports of homeless people in vacant structures have not been on the Ellsworth Police Department’s “radar,” Deputy Chief Shawn Willey said. They don’t appear to receive more reports during a particular season, Willey said.
In December 2021, a fire broke out at an abandoned two-story duplex on Bangor’s Union Street, killing three homeless men who were staying on the property, which was condemned by the city in March 2017. Two people escaped that fire according to Shannon Moss, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Tracey Hair, the former longtime executive director of H.O.M.E., a social services organization that maintains, among other community programs, four homeless shelters, said she rarely came across homeless people living in vacant homes. In the instances she had, they were people who had stayed in their own home long after it had been condemned, Hair said.
The first of last month’s fires, which investigators say was set on purpose, was at a vacant Ellsworth home on Water Street. Eleven days later a vacant home on Spruce Street was set ablaze, the cause of which is “undetermined,” Guillerault said.
Two vacant structures in Bangor also caught fire over the last month, though their causes are unclear.
On Jan. 29, a “relatively small” fire broke out at a vacant carriage house in Bangor, the city’s Assistant Fire Chief Chandler Corriveau said. Just a few days later, a second vacant house blazed a “significant amount of fire,” Bangor Fire Chief Geoffrey Low said at the time. No injuries were reported at either fire and both remain under investigation.
Chief Low did not respond to inquiries from the Bangor Daily News.
