GORHAM — One firefighter suffered minor injuries when fire tore through a garage and single-family home Friday morning on Plummer Road in Gorham.
Seth Crossman, 28, who has owned the home at 11 Plummer Road for about four years, awoke to the sound of people screaming that his house was on fire.
Gorham Deputy Fire Chief Ken Fickett said the fire appears to have started in the garage, which was ablaze when the first firefighters arrived.
Crossman said he bought the home to assist his extended family, who had lost their home to a bank. About seven people, spanning three generations and including one unrelated friend of Crossman’s, were living in the home at the time.
“I bought it four years ago to help my family out,” said Crossman, who stood barefoot and shirtless across the street as firefighters picked through and extinguished the last smoldering embers.
Now much of the home is ruined, but Fickett said a portion of it may be salvageable.
The Red Cross of Maine was expected to help Crossman and his family, Fickett said.
No one interviewed who was inside the home at the time of the fire could pinpoint why or where it started. The State Fire Marshal’s Office was called to investigate the cause, Fickett said.
Also destroyed in the fire was a camper set up behind the garage, where Crossman’s brother, Chris Green, was living. Green, 24, was at work when Crossman called to tell him the house was ablaze.
Green rushed from his job at a body shop, but by the time he arrived, the camper was already burning.
“Everything I owned was in that camper,” Green said. “Everything.”
Another resident, Shawn Cressey, 22, one of Crossman’s friends, said he fled the house before it filled with smoke, but ran back in to retrieve his two dogs, who made it out uninjured.
Asked if he was concerned about the loss of his belongings, Cressey was unmoved.
“I was more worried about me and my animals,” he said. “I don’t give a (expletive) about my stuff.”
Matt Byrne can be contacted at 791-6303 or at:
mbyrne@pressherald.com
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