Exeter fire destroys feed store warehouse

By Nok-Noi Ricker
BDN Staff

EXETER — A blaze ripped through the Perkco Supply warehouse Sunday, engulfing the entire building in flames at one point, but the nearby store remains open for business.

BDN photo/Gabor Degre

PERKCO SUPPLY FIRE — The remains of a Perkco Supply store’s warehouse smolder Monday morning in Exeter. The cause of the fire has not been determined, but Perkco Supply was open the day after.

The warehouse, located at 1326 Exeter Road, caught fire about 6:20 p.m. and firefighters from all over the region came to fight the blaze, Corinna Fire Chief Allen Emerson said Monday.

Though the warehouse is located across a driveway from the owner’s home, the fire was called in by Lt. Jeff Dorman of the Corinna Fire Department, who was driving by after leaving an officer’s training session at the station.

“The people were home and didn’t even know it was on fire,” Emerson said. “By the time our first truck got there, it was better than half- to three-quarters of the way through the building. At that point, our main concern was to keep the house and the grain store from burning.”

Some of the home’s siding was damaged, but otherwise, the home and the store, which are both on the west side of the warehouse, were saved, the fire chief said.

Business owner Gary Perkins, his wife and sons were home when the fire broke out, and all were able to escape uninjured.

Perkins said Monday that he was just happy there were no injuries.

“Everything else is replaceable,” Perkins said, adding that the warehouse is insured.

“We lost our warehouse, but we’re still open,” a Perkco Supply store clerk said Monday morning.

The business is an animal and livestock feed dealer, farm supply, pet food and supply and hardware store, the company website states.

Emerson said he lives about a mile from the store, and when he got into his truck to head to the fire he could see the smoke.

“I said, ‘Wow. It’s going to be big,’” the chief recalled.

The fire had plenty to fuel it since the warehouse was filled with some 15,000 bales of hay, among other dry goods.

“It stayed burning hot for quite a while with the hay, grain, flooring, wood, dog food … all stored in there for the winter,” Emerson said. “It’s still so hot. It’s still burning.”

The fire started on the west or Corinna end of the building, and once it broke through the exterior and the wind was able to get at it, the structure quickly became fully engulfed in flames, the fire chief said.

“The wind was blowing the other way. That probably saved the house,” Emerson said. “It took [the warehouse] down in no time.”

Firefighters also had to deal with additional dangers with fertilizer and propane tanks stored in the building. Some of the tanks exploded when the flames reached them, and there was just enough fertilizer that fire officials “tried to keep the guys upwind from the fire” and out of the toxic fumes created when it burns, Emerson said.

Exeter does not have a fire department, so firefighters were called in to help from Corinna, Dexter, Newport, Corinth, Stetson, Levant, St. Albans, Hartland, Dover, Sangerville and Detroit.

The firetrucks returned to their stations between 1 and 2 a.m., but one firefighter “stayed there all night to keep an eye on it.”

State fire marshal’s office investigators are scheduled to head to the scene Tuesday, after giving the smoldering debris time to cool enough so they can dig through the remains of the warehouse to look for clues as to how the fire started, the chief said.

Bangor Daily News photographer Gabor Degre contributed to this story.