Published in the Current
Infantryman Albert Riopel
Albert Riopel, 84, spends most of his days in the Maine Veterans Home on Rt. 1 in Scarborough. And though he is in the company of a great many veterans of World War II, he hasn’t found anyone else who was at Pearl Harbor the day the Japanese attacked.
He volunteered for the infantry in 1940 and after training he went to Pearl Harbor, to prepare for an attack on Japanese positions on Corregidor, an island stronghold in the Pacific.
Preparations were under way as negotiations deteriorated between the Japanese and U.S. governments, and war appeared more probable. But nobody expected the attack that peaceful Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941.
He was just getting up when the attack began.
“It was a fiasco. (The Japanese) knew what they were doing,” Riopel said. They bombed the harbor, the barracks and the airfield, destroying much of the military hardware in Hawaii.
Riopel’s unit was sent to Clark Field to defend it from attack.
Everyone expected the Japanese to land and try to take the island, and Riopel thinks they might have succeeded. But they didn’t try.
“They wanted to cripple the Navy,” he said. “It was over in no time at all.”
After the attack, the invasion force, including Riopel, headed for Corregidor, but found it surrounded by enemy submarines.
So they invaded New Guinea instead. Fighting in the jungle was merciless, he said, and difficult because of the thick underbrush.
The Japanese would hide all over the place and attack from any direction, Riopel said.
“Every time we’d go on patrol the first one (in line) would get killed—the first one and the last one,” Riopel said.
He doesn’t like to remember the scenes he saw, but did say he watched many of his friends die over the four years he spent fighting in the jungle.
“It was rough,” Riopel said. “I lost a lot of my friends there.”
He said fighting in the Pacific was brutal. “Many times I wished I was in Europe,” he said, where soldiers would capture a city and then celebrate.
Riopel especially envied the access to wine the European soldiers had.
But in the Pacific things were different.
“You capture one island and you go on to the next,” he said.
Even worse, General MacArthur wouldn’t let his unit go back to the U.S. “He wouldn’t let us leave because we had experience,” Riopel said.
He especially respected the Australian soldiers, whom he described as tough and skilled fighters, though they would stop for tea twice a day, he said, “no matter where they were.”
He wasn’t a career soldier, and after the war ended he came to Maine and worked in mills for more than 40 years. He lived in Westbrook and two weeks ago sold the house he owned in that town for over 55 years.
His daughter lives in Cape Elizabeth, and he gets a lot of visits from his family, but when he sits alone sometimes, he said, memories of what he saw in the war come flooding back.
Nurse Revella Guest
Revella Guest was born Nov. 8, 1912, in Brownville Junction to a Canadian mother and an English father. She went to high school in the town, and then went to Portland to study nursing at Maine General Hospital, graduating in 1935.
Her papers, now in the care of a relative in Scarborough, tell the story of her life, including her experience as a nurse at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Restless with private duty work around Portland, she became an Army nurse on Jan. 30, 1930. By March of 1941 she was heading to Tripler Army Hospital near Honolulu, the capital of the then-territory of Hawaii. She was lodged at Hickam Field, which would suffer serious damage in the Dec. 7 attack. On Dec. 5, though, the nurses were moved from their four-person apartments back to rooms at Tripler.
That night, she and some of her nursing friends went to dinner on the battleship USS West Virginia with some warrant officers serving
on that ship.
As they ate and watched a movie, it never crossed their minds that Japan could attack. “Everybody was just having a good time and doing their duty. We never thought anything about that,” Guest said.
On Dec. 7, just like the day before, she was scheduled for the morning shift.
The attack
At 7 a.m., Dec. 7, she reported for work at the hospital, and was doing routine work on the ward, when it happened.
“All of a sudden the radio started blaring for all military people to report back to their stations. We had porches and I was out looking on the back porch, and I saw some, heard some guns, and I saw black smoke coming up. I thought, ‘My goodness! I’ve never seen that before!’” she said.
“Then the radio started to blare that we were being attacked by the Japanese. Then I called down to my friends where they were, and I told them to get up and get dressed because everybody was going to be working, because we were being attacked by the Japanese,” Guest said.
The hospital had fewer staff on duty over the weekend, with some people having time off and even some patients out on a pass. But she knew it would be a busy day.
“We knew that when we were being attacked that we were going to have casualties because we were the largest general hospital on the island. In fact, we were the only general hospital,” she said.
She spent the first few minutes getting the walking wounded out of the hospital to make room for more seriously injured people. When she was done, only two patients remained, both of whom were in traction, but they were not about to let that stop them.
“I had to watch those guys like a hawk,” she said, “because they were going to cut themselves out of traction and go to war.”
Her ward became a post-operation ward, where patients went after surgery. “You had amputees, abdominal wounds, head injuries. You name it, and it was there,” Guest said.
She and one other nurse were racing around caring for 65 patients, changing intravenous fluids and providing other care to the men, as
they came out from under anaesthesia. They didn’t have time to do proper charts, but instead scribbled the time of the last morphine injection a patient received on a scrap of paper at the head of each bed.
As night fell, the hospital was blacked out to protect against air raids. She needed to give a shot to a patient on the porch, and removed the piece of blue carbon paper from the front of the flashlight, so she could see the vein. “I’d take that thing off and some guard would holler, ‘Put out that light or I’ll shoot!’ I’d yell, ‘Shut up until I give this shot!’” she laughed.
She worked through the whole night and into the next day without any sleep. She was first able to change into a clean uniform at 6 a.m. Dec. 8.
A few days after the attack, she and a friend went to the local telegraph office to deliver their first news to their families that they were OK. Her telegram just said, “Revella.”
The first shipload of patients headed back to the mainland on Christmas Day, after Guest and her colleagues spent a lot of time Christmas Eve bandaging patients to be ready for travel.
Still tied to Maine
Her family remembers her as having loved Maine and returning as often as possible.
Her papers and other effects were distributed among the family. Many of her World War II records and items are now with her sister-inlaw’s
cousin, Ken Dolloff of Scarborough.
Thursday, December 6, 2001
Moose on the loose in Cape
Published in the Current
School bus drivers and neighbors have spotted two moose wandering around in the Great Pond area of Fowler Road, often in the early morning.
Out of concern for the well being of the animals and the safety of drivers on the road, the Cape Elizabeth Police Department asked a wildlife biologist from the state to take a look at the area and help determine whether the moose should be tranquilized and relocated or left alone.
The biologist visited Fowler Road Tuesday afternoon, and didn’t see the moose, one of which is reportedly smaller than the other. But he did make a recommendation to Police Chief Neil Williams about what to do.
“His feeling is that they’re going to move on,” Williams said. With the warm weather and the apples on the ground nearby, they have food for the moment. But when it cools off, and when the snow comes, Williams said, “they’ll move on with the supply of food.”
The police will continue to keep an eye on the area, and have ordered signs be put up warning drivers to watch out for moose.
If the moose are a mother and a calf born in the spring, the little one could weigh as much as 400 pounds. The mother would weigh between 700 and 900 pounds, and could stand as much as six feet tall at the shoulder.
Moose are especially dangerous to drivers because their coats are dark and their eyes are higher than most headlight beams, so drivers don’t see their reflections the way they do with deer or other smaller animals.
Also, moose tend to be active between dusk and dawn, when visibility is lowest. And they can be unpredictable, sometimes darting out in front of an oncoming car.
For now, Cape’s moose will have a temporary home, but will move where nature supplies the food.
“They should be up north, but they’re not,” Williams said.
School bus drivers and neighbors have spotted two moose wandering around in the Great Pond area of Fowler Road, often in the early morning.
Out of concern for the well being of the animals and the safety of drivers on the road, the Cape Elizabeth Police Department asked a wildlife biologist from the state to take a look at the area and help determine whether the moose should be tranquilized and relocated or left alone.
The biologist visited Fowler Road Tuesday afternoon, and didn’t see the moose, one of which is reportedly smaller than the other. But he did make a recommendation to Police Chief Neil Williams about what to do.
“His feeling is that they’re going to move on,” Williams said. With the warm weather and the apples on the ground nearby, they have food for the moment. But when it cools off, and when the snow comes, Williams said, “they’ll move on with the supply of food.”
The police will continue to keep an eye on the area, and have ordered signs be put up warning drivers to watch out for moose.
If the moose are a mother and a calf born in the spring, the little one could weigh as much as 400 pounds. The mother would weigh between 700 and 900 pounds, and could stand as much as six feet tall at the shoulder.
Moose are especially dangerous to drivers because their coats are dark and their eyes are higher than most headlight beams, so drivers don’t see their reflections the way they do with deer or other smaller animals.
Also, moose tend to be active between dusk and dawn, when visibility is lowest. And they can be unpredictable, sometimes darting out in front of an oncoming car.
For now, Cape’s moose will have a temporary home, but will move where nature supplies the food.
“They should be up north, but they’re not,” Williams said.
Students hear the call for fire and rescue work
Published in the Current
While their friends and classmates are playing sports, hanging out with friends or doing homework, some high school students in Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth would rather be out fighting fires, directing traffic or administering medical care to sick and injured people in their communities.
They learn skills they will use as police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, and they begin serving their communities from a young age.
It is a crucial opportunity, according to Cape Elizabeth Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick, who got his start as a firefighter in South Portland’s student program 40 years ago.
“You get them when they’ve got some time and interest,” McGouldrick said, and before they go away to college and lose interest or no longer have the time to learn firefighting skills.
It offers another benefit to the towns, both of which are home to commuting workers. Fire and rescue volunteers are in shorter supply during the day, but the departments are bolstered by the students, who are nearly always around during school hours.
The students all must qualify for their extracurricular activities in the same way as student athletes do, by keeping grades up and by being responsible for any class work missed.
Going since the 1960s
The oldest program in the two towns is Scarborough’s student rescue squad, begun in 1968.
The program now involves seven or eight members each of the junior and senior classes at the high school.
They have weekly training sessions, in which juniors prepare for the Emergency Medical Technician training course mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. They learn basic first aid, CPR and how to splint broken bones. Seniors, who have taken the EMT course at Southern Maine Technical College in the summer after junior year, practice their skills.
The seniors also carry fire department pagers and can be paged out of classes at the high school to respond to an emergency.
They are responsible for all their class work and homework, and must keep their grades up.
While students used to respond to all fire and rescue calls during the school day, the recent growth of business in town has resulted in a change to that policy, according to program coordinator Bob Hawkes.
Because a number of daytime fire calls are from malfunctioning automatic alarm boxes at businesses, there is really no need for extra medical assistance. If the students left class for each of these calls, Hawkes said, they would never be in school at all. So the students are only paged out if the call is one that will require medical attention.
Several students plan to participate in rescue squads while in college, and some of them will be entering the medical field.
“It just opened a door for me,” said Karolina Kurka, who wants to be a doctor. Her colleagues echo her interest and dedication, even after spending a large part of the past summer in a classroom at SMTC studying to be an EMT.
“It was definitely worth it,” said Stephanie Byrne.
Scarborough Police Explorers
Scarborough students are not just working on the rescue squad.
Several are involved in law enforcement, through the 5-year-old Explorer post run by the town’s police department.
The group, while part of the Boy Scouts program, is open to both girls and boys between 15 and 21.
The program now includes about 10 people, according to community service officer Joe Giacomantonio.
The kids have a rank structure and uniforms, and get training in various aspects of law enforcement.
They do ride-alongs with town police officers, learn about dispatch and incident reporting, learn to direct traffic and perform various projects in the community, like putting up street signs required by the E-911 system.
Giacomantonio said they have no authority to make arrests, and do not carry firearms, though they do some firearms training on a shooting range.
The group is presently raising money to pay for a trip to Flagstaff, Ariz., in July 2002 for a conference of law enforcement Explorer posts. Among their activities will be a comedy night at the high school on Mar. 6, featuring local comedian Bob Marley.
The Explorer post provides a career-development opportunity for the students. “I really want to be in law enforcement,” said Explorer Lt. Ann Chaney. “My favorite part is a lot of the training.”
The group also sells Christmas trees at Bayley’s campground on Pine Point Road, and helps clean up a local YMCA campground.
Cape Elizabeth Student Firefighters
Several students at Cape Elizabeth High School also carry pagers and respond to calls during school hours. They take the Firefighter I course, a nationally required course for firefighters, one evening a week. They’re required to keep their grades up to stay in the program.
“It’s been very useful,” said Fire Chief McGouldrick. He said it’s a great way to make sure there are firefighters in the community.
The program offers the department additional personnel during the day, and though the students who haven’t completed their training can’t actually go into a burning building, they can help with opening and tending fire hydrants, getting drinks and tools for the firefighters, and doing other smaller, but no less important tasks around the fire scene, McGouldrick said.
“They’ve been real valuable to us,” he said.
Student firefighter Mike Walsh said he enjoys the work and the learning. He even comes to the Fire Department on his free periods to be available for calls or training.
Cape Elizabeth Student Rescue
The Cape firefighters have colleagues on the rescue side of things, as well. While they do not get certified as EMTs as part of the town’s Student Rescue program, they get exposed to a wide variety of emergency calls. They are not allowed to respond to calls involving suicide threats, people trapped in cars after accidents or other potentially disturbing scenarios.
The program is about 10 years old, according to the new coordinator, Mike Tranfaglia, a physician’s assistant who is also an ambulance driver for the squad.
Two students are on call each week when school is in session.
They wear radio pagers and respond to the fire station when a call comes in. They are allowed to decide whether to go.
“The ambulance is going to run whether they’re there or not,” Tranfaglia said.
When they go on a call, they don’t perform direct patient care, but instead observe what happens and help out by being go-fers for the EMTs, getting slings or other medical equipment from the ambulance.
They do learn to take vital signs and sometimes are asked to do that in the course of a call, Tranfaglia said.
At least once each month the group, which now numbers four, meets with Tranfaglia to discuss the past month’s runs. They go over general principles of medicine, and Tranfaglia uses calls about chest pain, for example, to teach about the risk factors for heart disease.
He said some of the students go on to further careers in medicine or join the squad as EMTs, but not all do.
“It’s supposed to be educational exposure. We’re not trying to get members for Cape Rescue out of this,” Tranfaglia said.
Christopher Roy is one of the students in the group, and has been a part of the program since his sophomore year. He is now a senior and said he wants to become a physician. He is not sure whether he’ll specialize in emergency medicine or not, but he’s learning.
“It seemed like a good way to try it out,” Roy said. He said there is also satisfaction in the way he’s learning. “I like helping others.”
He is considering taking an EMT course in the spring, and said he enjoys working with the other members on the rescue squad and learning from their experience, though sometimes that can be a little stressful during a call when a medic needs to do something without a lot of questions.
Roy also said he enjoys meeting members of the public and learning about general safety issues.
“You get all sorts,” he said. “Everybody you meet is an interesting person.”
While their friends and classmates are playing sports, hanging out with friends or doing homework, some high school students in Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth would rather be out fighting fires, directing traffic or administering medical care to sick and injured people in their communities.
They learn skills they will use as police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, and they begin serving their communities from a young age.
It is a crucial opportunity, according to Cape Elizabeth Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick, who got his start as a firefighter in South Portland’s student program 40 years ago.
“You get them when they’ve got some time and interest,” McGouldrick said, and before they go away to college and lose interest or no longer have the time to learn firefighting skills.
It offers another benefit to the towns, both of which are home to commuting workers. Fire and rescue volunteers are in shorter supply during the day, but the departments are bolstered by the students, who are nearly always around during school hours.
The students all must qualify for their extracurricular activities in the same way as student athletes do, by keeping grades up and by being responsible for any class work missed.
Going since the 1960s
The oldest program in the two towns is Scarborough’s student rescue squad, begun in 1968.
The program now involves seven or eight members each of the junior and senior classes at the high school.
They have weekly training sessions, in which juniors prepare for the Emergency Medical Technician training course mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. They learn basic first aid, CPR and how to splint broken bones. Seniors, who have taken the EMT course at Southern Maine Technical College in the summer after junior year, practice their skills.
The seniors also carry fire department pagers and can be paged out of classes at the high school to respond to an emergency.
They are responsible for all their class work and homework, and must keep their grades up.
While students used to respond to all fire and rescue calls during the school day, the recent growth of business in town has resulted in a change to that policy, according to program coordinator Bob Hawkes.
Because a number of daytime fire calls are from malfunctioning automatic alarm boxes at businesses, there is really no need for extra medical assistance. If the students left class for each of these calls, Hawkes said, they would never be in school at all. So the students are only paged out if the call is one that will require medical attention.
Several students plan to participate in rescue squads while in college, and some of them will be entering the medical field.
“It just opened a door for me,” said Karolina Kurka, who wants to be a doctor. Her colleagues echo her interest and dedication, even after spending a large part of the past summer in a classroom at SMTC studying to be an EMT.
“It was definitely worth it,” said Stephanie Byrne.
Scarborough Police Explorers
Scarborough students are not just working on the rescue squad.
Several are involved in law enforcement, through the 5-year-old Explorer post run by the town’s police department.
The group, while part of the Boy Scouts program, is open to both girls and boys between 15 and 21.
The program now includes about 10 people, according to community service officer Joe Giacomantonio.
The kids have a rank structure and uniforms, and get training in various aspects of law enforcement.
They do ride-alongs with town police officers, learn about dispatch and incident reporting, learn to direct traffic and perform various projects in the community, like putting up street signs required by the E-911 system.
Giacomantonio said they have no authority to make arrests, and do not carry firearms, though they do some firearms training on a shooting range.
The group is presently raising money to pay for a trip to Flagstaff, Ariz., in July 2002 for a conference of law enforcement Explorer posts. Among their activities will be a comedy night at the high school on Mar. 6, featuring local comedian Bob Marley.
The Explorer post provides a career-development opportunity for the students. “I really want to be in law enforcement,” said Explorer Lt. Ann Chaney. “My favorite part is a lot of the training.”
The group also sells Christmas trees at Bayley’s campground on Pine Point Road, and helps clean up a local YMCA campground.
Cape Elizabeth Student Firefighters
Several students at Cape Elizabeth High School also carry pagers and respond to calls during school hours. They take the Firefighter I course, a nationally required course for firefighters, one evening a week. They’re required to keep their grades up to stay in the program.
“It’s been very useful,” said Fire Chief McGouldrick. He said it’s a great way to make sure there are firefighters in the community.
The program offers the department additional personnel during the day, and though the students who haven’t completed their training can’t actually go into a burning building, they can help with opening and tending fire hydrants, getting drinks and tools for the firefighters, and doing other smaller, but no less important tasks around the fire scene, McGouldrick said.
“They’ve been real valuable to us,” he said.
Student firefighter Mike Walsh said he enjoys the work and the learning. He even comes to the Fire Department on his free periods to be available for calls or training.
Cape Elizabeth Student Rescue
The Cape firefighters have colleagues on the rescue side of things, as well. While they do not get certified as EMTs as part of the town’s Student Rescue program, they get exposed to a wide variety of emergency calls. They are not allowed to respond to calls involving suicide threats, people trapped in cars after accidents or other potentially disturbing scenarios.
The program is about 10 years old, according to the new coordinator, Mike Tranfaglia, a physician’s assistant who is also an ambulance driver for the squad.
Two students are on call each week when school is in session.
They wear radio pagers and respond to the fire station when a call comes in. They are allowed to decide whether to go.
“The ambulance is going to run whether they’re there or not,” Tranfaglia said.
When they go on a call, they don’t perform direct patient care, but instead observe what happens and help out by being go-fers for the EMTs, getting slings or other medical equipment from the ambulance.
They do learn to take vital signs and sometimes are asked to do that in the course of a call, Tranfaglia said.
At least once each month the group, which now numbers four, meets with Tranfaglia to discuss the past month’s runs. They go over general principles of medicine, and Tranfaglia uses calls about chest pain, for example, to teach about the risk factors for heart disease.
He said some of the students go on to further careers in medicine or join the squad as EMTs, but not all do.
“It’s supposed to be educational exposure. We’re not trying to get members for Cape Rescue out of this,” Tranfaglia said.
Christopher Roy is one of the students in the group, and has been a part of the program since his sophomore year. He is now a senior and said he wants to become a physician. He is not sure whether he’ll specialize in emergency medicine or not, but he’s learning.
“It seemed like a good way to try it out,” Roy said. He said there is also satisfaction in the way he’s learning. “I like helping others.”
He is considering taking an EMT course in the spring, and said he enjoys working with the other members on the rescue squad and learning from their experience, though sometimes that can be a little stressful during a call when a medic needs to do something without a lot of questions.
Roy also said he enjoys meeting members of the public and learning about general safety issues.
“You get all sorts,” he said. “Everybody you meet is an interesting person.”
Thursday, November 29, 2001
Woodstove blamed for Thanksgiving fire in Cape
Published in the Current
On Thanksgiving night, firefighters’ pagers went off all over Cape Elizabeth. The home of Rudy,Teresa and Alex Tumidajski on Sweet Fern Road was ablaze.
The family was in Connecticut for the holiday, but relatives who live nearby came to the house.
They called Connecticut and the Tumidajskis headed back to Maine that night. Their beloved dog, an Australian terrier named Max, died in the fire. “He was 7 going on 2,” Teresa Tumidajski said. Rudy said he wasn’t sure if he would get another dog, after the heartbreak of losing Max.
As firefighters arrived, they saw a house “fully involved,” with flames shooting from
upstairs windows and licking the outside of the brick chimney.
“The fire had a real good jump on us,” said Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick. The beams holding up the second floor had already burned through, collapsing a bedroom into the living room. McGouldrick said the fire was due to prolonged use of a woodstove insert in the fireplace.
There is sometimes little a firefighter can actually do. Even rapidly extinguishing a blaze can leave only a sodden, ash-coated shell of a building, with a home, memories and treasured possessions destroyed.
In the effort, two firefighters were slightly injured, one by tripping over a planter sitting on the darkened lawn, and the other had his shoulder clipped by a piece of clapboard that fell off the building.
Within 25 minutes of the crews’ arrival, the fire was under control, and the home’s attached three-car garage was saved, McGouldrick said.
After that came what the crews call “overhaul,” when they tear apart the remains of the building’s interior to make sure there is no fire hiding between walls or in the rubble.
Investigators next comb through the wreckage, searching for the source of the fire.
The outside of the building gives a good clue. There is severe damage around the chimney and in the upper bedroom, where the fire burned through the exterior walls.
The house was originally built with electric heat, but due to the expense, there was a woodstove insert installed into the fireplace which McGouldrick believes caused the fire. Over 12 years, the Tumidajskis have used the insert primarily as a furnace.
“A fireplace is more aesthetic,” McGouldrick said, and should not be used as the primary source of heat in a home.
The sustained heat from the stove made the fireplace bricks hot. Those bricks were stacked right up against the wood frame of the house, which would be fine for a fireplace in occasional use, McGouldrick said, but is not appropriate for a furnace.
Over time, high heat affects the wood, creating a low-grade smoldering, which makes it more likely to catch fire.
A new two-by-four needs to be heated to between 300 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit before it will burn, McGouldrick said. But after years of heat contact like that in the Tumidajskis’ fireplace, it would only need to get up to around 100 degrees before catching fire.
McGouldrick said people who have woodstove inserts should have their fireplaces checked out by the local fire department. And people going through a house with a home inspector should ask about the possibility of installing a woodstove into the fireplace, rather than assuming it will be fine.
The family had banked up their woodstove so it would continue to heat the house over the long weekend.
And hours after they left, it heated the wood to its burning point.
With few neighbors home, and the fire on the side of the house and away from the street, nobody noticed the flames until it was too late.
The shell of the house remains, with its windows boarded up. The family said the insurance company may decide to repair the damage rather than start from scratch, but that remains to be seen.
The Tumidajskis are holding up well, staying with Teresa’s mother in South Portland, and focusing on “what’s important in life.”
“Your world as you know it is turned upside-down and disintegrated,” Teresa said.
She said they do plan to rebuild the house, but it could be several months in the process, notwithstanding winter.
She asked that people who want to help say prayers for the family.
Chief McGouldrick said his firefighters turned out in great numbers despite the holiday. The first people on the scene were there within five minutes of the call. “We had a good response,” McGouldrick said. And nobody really left early, either, even though, with cleanup included, the work took close to four hours. “The more people that stay and pitch in, the quicker everybody gets home.”
“It’s what firefighters do,” McGouldrick said, “and what their families have come to expect. It just seems to happen at inopportune times.”
On Thanksgiving night, firefighters’ pagers went off all over Cape Elizabeth. The home of Rudy,Teresa and Alex Tumidajski on Sweet Fern Road was ablaze.
The family was in Connecticut for the holiday, but relatives who live nearby came to the house.
They called Connecticut and the Tumidajskis headed back to Maine that night. Their beloved dog, an Australian terrier named Max, died in the fire. “He was 7 going on 2,” Teresa Tumidajski said. Rudy said he wasn’t sure if he would get another dog, after the heartbreak of losing Max.
As firefighters arrived, they saw a house “fully involved,” with flames shooting from
upstairs windows and licking the outside of the brick chimney.
“The fire had a real good jump on us,” said Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick. The beams holding up the second floor had already burned through, collapsing a bedroom into the living room. McGouldrick said the fire was due to prolonged use of a woodstove insert in the fireplace.
There is sometimes little a firefighter can actually do. Even rapidly extinguishing a blaze can leave only a sodden, ash-coated shell of a building, with a home, memories and treasured possessions destroyed.
In the effort, two firefighters were slightly injured, one by tripping over a planter sitting on the darkened lawn, and the other had his shoulder clipped by a piece of clapboard that fell off the building.
Within 25 minutes of the crews’ arrival, the fire was under control, and the home’s attached three-car garage was saved, McGouldrick said.
After that came what the crews call “overhaul,” when they tear apart the remains of the building’s interior to make sure there is no fire hiding between walls or in the rubble.
Investigators next comb through the wreckage, searching for the source of the fire.
The outside of the building gives a good clue. There is severe damage around the chimney and in the upper bedroom, where the fire burned through the exterior walls.
The house was originally built with electric heat, but due to the expense, there was a woodstove insert installed into the fireplace which McGouldrick believes caused the fire. Over 12 years, the Tumidajskis have used the insert primarily as a furnace.
“A fireplace is more aesthetic,” McGouldrick said, and should not be used as the primary source of heat in a home.
The sustained heat from the stove made the fireplace bricks hot. Those bricks were stacked right up against the wood frame of the house, which would be fine for a fireplace in occasional use, McGouldrick said, but is not appropriate for a furnace.
Over time, high heat affects the wood, creating a low-grade smoldering, which makes it more likely to catch fire.
A new two-by-four needs to be heated to between 300 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit before it will burn, McGouldrick said. But after years of heat contact like that in the Tumidajskis’ fireplace, it would only need to get up to around 100 degrees before catching fire.
McGouldrick said people who have woodstove inserts should have their fireplaces checked out by the local fire department. And people going through a house with a home inspector should ask about the possibility of installing a woodstove into the fireplace, rather than assuming it will be fine.
The family had banked up their woodstove so it would continue to heat the house over the long weekend.
And hours after they left, it heated the wood to its burning point.
With few neighbors home, and the fire on the side of the house and away from the street, nobody noticed the flames until it was too late.
The shell of the house remains, with its windows boarded up. The family said the insurance company may decide to repair the damage rather than start from scratch, but that remains to be seen.
The Tumidajskis are holding up well, staying with Teresa’s mother in South Portland, and focusing on “what’s important in life.”
“Your world as you know it is turned upside-down and disintegrated,” Teresa said.
She said they do plan to rebuild the house, but it could be several months in the process, notwithstanding winter.
She asked that people who want to help say prayers for the family.
Chief McGouldrick said his firefighters turned out in great numbers despite the holiday. The first people on the scene were there within five minutes of the call. “We had a good response,” McGouldrick said. And nobody really left early, either, even though, with cleanup included, the work took close to four hours. “The more people that stay and pitch in, the quicker everybody gets home.”
“It’s what firefighters do,” McGouldrick said, “and what their families have come to expect. It just seems to happen at inopportune times.”
Wednesday, November 21, 2001
Youth transition facility opens
Published in the Current
On a small dirt road off Mitchell Hill Road in Scarborough is a beautifully renovated house which will soon be home to six young adults in transition from the state’s youth services programs to systems serving adults.
On Dec. 1, the youths, between ages 17 and 21, will move in to their single bedrooms in the fully furnished house, along with a 24-hour support staff including social workers and psychiatrists. The program is run by Ingraham, the Portland-based human services agency.
All six bedrooms will be full, and the agency said there is a waiting list. This part of Ingraham’s programs helps troubled youths make transitions from youth to adult systems of state programs and helps teach them skills for living and working in a community.
The house existed before, but was significantly renovated with sprinklers, exit signs and other safety features added, as well as offices for staff, additional common space and landscaping.
“We wanted to keep it as homey as possible,” said Ingraham Executive Director Jane Morrison. “When you give (the residents) a beautiful atmosphere, they feel like they’re worth something.”
This is Ingraham’s seventh such home, but its first in Scarborough and the first in such a rural location.
There is a pond on the property for skating in winter, and trees and shrubs abound.
“It’s so serene,” Morrison said.
She said the agency could explore outdoor education and wildlife and ecology programs using the home as a base.
Neighbors have been supportive, Morrison said, adding that some are former Ingraham volunteers, which helped the community’s reception.
“We’ve always been a good neighbor,” Morrison said. Neighbors were also glad that there is 24-hour supervision, and that residents are carefully selected so as not to be a risk to themselves or others, Morrison said.
One challenge for the residents and staff alike will be transportation.
The house has a van, and can give residents rides to and from work, education and other programs. But since part of the program involves learning living skills, Morrison said sometimes the van will drive a group to the Maine Mall and they’ll have to take buses to their destinations.
On a small dirt road off Mitchell Hill Road in Scarborough is a beautifully renovated house which will soon be home to six young adults in transition from the state’s youth services programs to systems serving adults.
On Dec. 1, the youths, between ages 17 and 21, will move in to their single bedrooms in the fully furnished house, along with a 24-hour support staff including social workers and psychiatrists. The program is run by Ingraham, the Portland-based human services agency.
All six bedrooms will be full, and the agency said there is a waiting list. This part of Ingraham’s programs helps troubled youths make transitions from youth to adult systems of state programs and helps teach them skills for living and working in a community.
The house existed before, but was significantly renovated with sprinklers, exit signs and other safety features added, as well as offices for staff, additional common space and landscaping.
“We wanted to keep it as homey as possible,” said Ingraham Executive Director Jane Morrison. “When you give (the residents) a beautiful atmosphere, they feel like they’re worth something.”
This is Ingraham’s seventh such home, but its first in Scarborough and the first in such a rural location.
There is a pond on the property for skating in winter, and trees and shrubs abound.
“It’s so serene,” Morrison said.
She said the agency could explore outdoor education and wildlife and ecology programs using the home as a base.
Neighbors have been supportive, Morrison said, adding that some are former Ingraham volunteers, which helped the community’s reception.
“We’ve always been a good neighbor,” Morrison said. Neighbors were also glad that there is 24-hour supervision, and that residents are carefully selected so as not to be a risk to themselves or others, Morrison said.
One challenge for the residents and staff alike will be transportation.
The house has a van, and can give residents rides to and from work, education and other programs. But since part of the program involves learning living skills, Morrison said sometimes the van will drive a group to the Maine Mall and they’ll have to take buses to their destinations.
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