CARIBOU, Maine — “It was an odd day,” Caribou Fire Chief Scott Susi said about last Thursday when the department handled five incidents.
Susi said he received a call from a local resident on Thursday asking why sirens were constantly going off throughout the northeastern city.
Two firefighters responded to each of the first four incidents, while seven responded to a car accident later in the day. Susi said he was not worried about staffing issues at any point.
“We have a pretty good system,” the chief said.
The marathon for the department began at 6:09 a.m., when a Van Buren Road resident reported waking up to smoke in the house. Susi said it ended up being “nothing,” with the smell of smoke coming from “something outside.”
“You have to treat smoke calls like you’re going to a fire,” Susi said. “We brought an engine and ladder truck because you could be too far out of town by the time you need to put out a fire. If someone’s that disoriented when they call, and say they smell smoke, it could be a fire.”
Barely an hour later, the department received another call about a fire in a Peterbilt commercial trailer truck on the Bennett Drive bypass.
“Nobody was hurt,” Susi said, adding that firefighters were on scene for “a little over an hour.”
Firefighters later determined that the truck’s brakes caused the fire, which was handled with just one fire truck and some foam.
The chief said the third incident was “just a service call,” but that the fourth involved a possible carbon monoxide leak.
“Someone on the access highway gave us a call saying they weren’t feeling well,” Susi said. “Their trailer is really tight and they said they were sleeping more than ever.”
With reports like this, Susi said, “you have to go in and monitor every room,” to ensure the safety of the home.” The chief added that the 30 minutes it took firefighters to investigate was longer than normal for such an incident and that while the matter was ultimately resolved, they did not find any carbon monoxide leaks in the home.
“They suspected carbon monoxide because they weren’t feeling well,” Susi said. “We metered every room of the house.”
The chief added that there are a myriad of causes for carbon monoxide leaks, ranging from overcharging open cell or car batteries, or having a crack in a chimney or furnace.
The final incident of the day involved a two car accident near Sleeper’s store at 5:05 p.m., which Susi said “sounded like a distracted driver hit the back of another car.”
The chief could not name the individuals involved as three minors were in the car that drove into the second vehicle, and the driver of that second vehicle “didn’t need to be treated.”
First responders transported two minors who had been sitting in the front of the first car to the hospital to be treated for injuries that were not considered life threatening, Susi said. The backseat passenger was not injured but “went to visit her friends in the hospital,” the chief said.
“People really need to use caution when driving by Lyndon Street,” the chief said. “When people leave that light, they’re on the gas pedal and Lyndon Street is busy, especially around 5 p.m..”
Caribou police provided mutual aid for the late crash, assisting seven from Caribou FD, including Chief Susi, but the other four incidents were strictly handled by members of the Caribou Fire and Ambulance Department, according to the chief.
“This isn’t common,” Susi said. “There was something happening all day; it was just one thing after another.”
