Witness recalls seeing 40-foot flames at Orrington trash incinerator from across Penobscot River

Flames were shooting about 40 feet into air at the Orrington trash incinerator when a man living across the Penobscot River called 911 Tuesday evening.

Dennis Marble was sitting in his hot tub at his Hampden home across the Penobscot River when he first saw an orange glow coming from the Eagle Point Energy Center , formerly known as the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co.

Marble and his wife were likely some of the first people to call 911 and report the fire at around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. The fire was still burning Thursday and is expected to take multiple days to put out. Smoke from the fire is causing air quality issues from the Bangor-area to the midcoast and Down East.

Marble, who used to run the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter and serve on the Hampden Town Council, had seen fires at the facility before. He watched and waited for the emergency response, he told the Bangor Daily News. But 10 minutes passed and he still hadn’t seen any emergency lights.

At that point the flames he could see were around 40-feet high and a roughly 26-foot tall entrance was glowing orange with fire, Marble said. He could also hear minor explosions, possibly from aerosol cans exploding.

He left the hot tub and had his wife call 911 from their landline.

“This wasn’t just a fire on the tipping room floor, this was much more than that,” Marble said. “I still couldn’t get over that there had been no response.”

The couple heard the first sirens roughly four minutes after Marble’s wife called 911.

At that point the fire had burned for around 16 minutes, but that doesn’t include however long the roughly 8,000-ton trash pile burned before the flames were visible across the Penobscot River, Marble said.

Firefighters were on scene shortly after 8:30 p.m., with around 45 of them working throughout the night. The roughly 200-by-400 foot warehouse was fully engulfed in flames that were shooting through the roof when firefighters arrived, Orrington Fire Chief Scott Stewart said.

The owners of the facility said they believe it was caused by a lithium-ion battery. However, Stewart and the former plant manager both said Wednesday that they doubt that was the cause .

The cause of the fire will likely never be known because of the extent of damage, Stewart said.