Fire crews fight a multi-alarm fire at Kennebec Lumber Company on Sawmill Road in Greenfield on Saturday. PHOTO BY SEAN SYLVESTER—

Fire crews fight a multi-alarm fire at Kennebec Lumber Company on Sawmill Road in Greenfield on Saturday. PHOTO BY SEAN SYLVESTER—

Fire crews fight a multi-alarm fire at Kennebec Lumber Company on Sawmill Road in Greenfield on Saturday. PHOTOS BY SEAN SYLVESTER—

Fire crews fight a multi-alarm fire at Kennebec Lumber Company on Sawmill Road in Greenfield on Saturday. PHOTOS BY SEAN SYLVESTER—

Fire crews fight a multi-alarm fire at Kennebec Lumber Company on Sawmill Road in Greenfield on Saturday. PHOTOS BY SEAN SYLVESTER—

Fire crews fight a multi-alarm fire at Kennebec Lumber Company on Sawmill Road in Greenfield on Saturday. PHOTOS BY SEAN SYLVESTER—

Fire crews fought a multi-alarm fire at Kennebec Lumber Company on Sawmill Road in Greenfield on Saturday. PHOTOS BY SEAN SYLVESTER—

A four-alarm fire burned the Kennebec Lumber Company sawmill in Greenfield to the ground on Saturday afternoon and resulted in four firefighters having to be treated for dehydration and heat exhaustion.

Greenfield Fire Chief Rick McQuade said crews were called out at around 1:15 p.m. on Saturday after an employee of American Steel, which is located across the street from the sawmill, saw the flames and called it in.

“Part of the problem is that it sits back off the road, and if you were to drive by, there is a huge stack of logs that tended to block the view from the street, and made it hard to see the flames, so people driving by weren’t able to see and report it,” McQuade said.

The main mill building, located on 315 Sawmill Road, was already aflame when crews arrived on the scene, and burned to the ground.

“The first officer on the scene found that three-quarters of the building was involved,” McQuade said. “Sawmills tend to be a fairly open building, because of the process, and that leads to why the fire spread so rapidly.”

The cause of the fire wasn’t immediately apparent due to the extent of the damage, and is under investigation by the State Fire Marshal’s Office, but is not considered suspicious at this time, McQuade said.

There was no one in the sawmill at the time of the fire, and only one employee who was in a separate office building on-site, and no one was injured due to the fire. Several firefighters, however, were treated on the scene due to dehydration and heat exhaustion, and one firefighter had to be transported to Monadnock Community Hospital, due to fighting the fire in above-90-degree heat.

McQuade said one firefighter from Greenfield, one from Antrim, one from Lyndeborough and one from Peterborough were treated, but all have fully recovered as of Monday morning.

There are multiple other buildings on the property, as well as stacks of lumber and wood, McQuade said, so the fire rose to a fourth alarm both to protect the other buildings and due to the extreme heat and the need to rotate crews to keep them from overheating. Fire crews responded from 25 towns, including as far away as Goffstown, to assist.

The efforts to limit the fire to the mill building were successful, and the fire did not spread beyond that building and a mulch pile in the back of the mill.

The mill was topped with a metal roof, and when the building collapsed, the roof came down on top, causing crews to have to call in heavy machinery to pull the metal roof away to fight the fire that was burning underneath.

The water supply was Sunset Lake, about a mile away, and crews used an estimated 230,000 gallons of water to put out the flames.

The scene was cleared at 9:30 p.m., but crews returned three times on Sunday, at 4 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., for three rekindlings, which were reported by a passerby, a lumber mill employee, and one which was found by a Greenfield fire captain while doing a check.

“The problem is dealing with sawdust and bark mulch, they can smolder for days without anyone knowing they’re burning,” McQuade said.

A post on the Kennebec Lumber Company Facebook page thanked local first-responders for their aid. The company had a management team visit the site, and will be developing an action plan for affected workers, according to the post. 

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.

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