WALDOBORO — Firefighters from mutual aid fire departments have been assisting Waldoboro FD with a wildlands fire at 1004 Finntown Road, Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025. Due to high fire dangers, no burn permits have been issued for this day. Instead, the flames are believed by a property owner to be a rekindle of a burn from last week, according to Waldoboro Deputy Fire Chief Dale Smith. 

Waldoboro FD was alerted to the fire at 10:12 a.m., down a long driveway where a house and large property have become established. After an initial attempt to extinguish the fire themselves, Waldoboro requested and received apparatus and manpower support from Jefferson, Warren, and Cushing.

“We realized that this was too much for us,” said Smith, who estimates that about one acre has burned.

The first concern was preventing flames from entering the woods; that concern was heightened by a wind direction that was pushing those flames towards the treeline. Firefighters had to chase the wind, allowing themselves to be enveloped in the smoke in order to reach the sparks.

Secondary concerns were manpower and water; the water first came from the responding tanker trucks. After those tanks were depleted, tankers went to the Warren Fire Station for refills.

And then, there is the duff. The wildland ground is made up of layers upon layers of old, partly decomposed organic matter, such as dead leaves, needles, and small twigs. Sparks have a tendency to travel downward, through those layers and deep into the earth, where they sometimes latch to long roots or other combustible material and take off in any direction.

One firefighter reportedly suffered a minor burn.

Reach Sarah Thompson at news@penbaypilot.com