Firefighters extinguished a fire in Acadia National Park Friday night that likely was caused by two lightning strikes, according to officials.
The fire was initially reported by a man riding his bike in the park.
Peter Beckett said that he spotted the white smoke in the area of Gilmore Meadow at around 7:30 p.m. Friday.
”I was riding on the carriage roads from Shady Hill. About a mile before Gilmore Meadow, I started to smell smoke, so I was scanning the woods both sides, didn’t see anything,” he said.
When Beckett reached a small bridge where the water flows toward Aunt Betty’s Pond, which is near Eagle Lake, there were two other bicyclists that had stopped. They all discussed the smoke and Beckett called park headquarters to report it.
Multiple island and park agencies responded to the area west of Eagle Lake. They were looking for a fire, staging resources at the Eagle Lake boat ramp, or providing station coverage.
Park rangers trying to find the fire smelled smoke first, and then they saw it, but in the darkness of night, it was hard to locate the smoke’s source, which — like Beckett’s report — seemed to be located somewhere near Gilmore Meadow, which is to the west of Eagle Lake and close to Aunt Betty’s Pond and Chasm Brook.
The Ellsworth Police Department offered to fly its drone in the area.
At 9:50 p.m., radio traffic indicated that fire crews had found a 20-by-30-foot area that was mostly smoldering.
The carriage trails in the area made the site of the fire slightly more accessible, however, the darkness, the wild terrain, lack of cell phone coverage in the area, and the dry conditions made nighttime response a bit challenging.
Some fire crews were shuttled from the Eagle Lake Boat Ramp as was some gear. The smaller fire engine could not turn around on the carriage road, according to firefighter Andrew Flanagan and had to drive through, coming back to the regular roads near Parkman Mountain.
According to radio traffic at 10:19 p.m., the drone operator reported that all of the hot spots were in the general area that had already been identified.
At 11:02 p.m., according to radio traffic, the fire crews were getting water on the smoldering area, but will be digging it up and wetting it down for some time.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the entire coast of Maine is in a moderate drought, which accounts for almost one-third of the state.
This is the second fire in the park this year. A small fire on Acadia National Park property on July 1 in the Cleftstone Road area of Bar Harbor was believed to be “human-caused,” Acadia National Park Management Assistant John T. Kelly said at the time.
Five other fires in the park’s woodlands that occurred in a span of about 18 months were arson, according to federal court records. The St. Sauveur Mountain fires were allegedly started by one man, according to a search warrant. That case is still in the courts.
