Waterfront building in Lubec catches fire

Firefighters were working Tuesday afternoon to try to save a building along Lubec’s waterfront that had caught fire.

Photos and video posted on the Lubec Community Bulletin Board on Facebook show that the building is located next to a municipal parking lot at the town’s boat ramp at the north end of Water Street. The photos show flames shooting up from the peak of the roof and large plumes of smoke billowing into the air.

Damage from the fire appears to be extensive.

Firefighters were at the building Tuesday afternoon and were unable to provide details about the blaze, according to people who answered phone calls at the town office and at the fire station. A message sent to the fire chief’s phone was not immediately returned.

Selena Fitzsimmons, a local resident, said she found out about the fire from a relative. She lives close to where the fire occurred, and arrived at the scene within minutes.

At first, there was only some smoke rising from the building, but before long the whole roof was consumed in flames.

“I thought it was under control. But very quickly that wasn’t the case,” Fitzsimmons said.

She said that, as far as she knows, the building has been empty for years and no one was hurt.

The fire is the latest example of the town’s struggle to preserve its historic working waterfront.

It was unclear Tuesday what the recent use of the building has been, but many of the buildings along Water Street and nearby sites used to function as part of the once-thriving sardine industry in the state.

The former Peacock Cannery, once located behind an existing building at 72 Water St., was torn down in the past decade after being damaged in a winter storm, according to EPA documents posted online . Another former cannery building at a site on Route 189 that overlooks Johnson Bay was demolished in 2016.

And in 2018, a former brining shed supported only by wooden posts off Water Street made international news when a winter storm pulled it into Lubec Narrows and across the Canadian border to Campobello.

A member of the local historical society, who declined to share her name, said Tuesday that the building claimed by Tuesday’s fire also was used for years by commercial seafood businesses. Many local landmarks have been lost over the decades to storms, fires and decay, she said.

“There have been a lot of buildings in Lubec that have been torn down and disappeared,” she said.