A silo explosion at Robbins Lumber has killed a 27-year-old Maine firefighter and injured at least 11 others at the fifth-generation sawmill that has anchored the town of Searsmont since 1881. That is according to the Maine Department of Public Safety, which confirmed the death of Morrill firefighter Andrew Cross in a statement issued by State Fire Marshal Shawn Esler over the weekend.
Crews responded to a silo fire at the mill’s 506 Main Street South address shortly after 10 am Friday, with the Searsmont Fire Department drawing mutual aid from roughly two dozen surrounding departments as the blaze grew. While firefighters were attempting fire suppression at the silo, an explosion ripped through the structure, killing Cross at the scene and leaving multiple others with critical injuries.
Maine Medical Center in Portland, the state’s only Level 1 trauma facility, confirmed it was treating 10 patients transferred from regional hospitals across midcoast Maine, with Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor handling a further critical patient who has since been transferred to another facility. The Red Cross of Northern New England deployed 10 trained disaster responders to support firefighters at the scene through Friday afternoon and into the weekend.
Robbins Lumber co-owner Catherine Robbins-Halsted confirmed all employees were accounted for, though she would not comment on whether any of the mill’s more than 100 workers were among the injured. “Buildings can be replaced, employees cannot,” Robbins-Halsted said.
The Robbins Lumber site at Searsmont, photographed from the air on Friday as the silo fire took hold, sits on the same ground where the original diesel-powered mill burned down in 1957 before the Robbins family rebuilt across five generations. (Photo Credit: Maine Department of Public Safety via AP)
The mill dates back to 1881 and burned down once before, in 1957, when its then-diesel-powered operation was destroyed, and the Robbins family rebuilt it on the same Searsmont site. The site also suffered a control-room fire in its dry kiln during 2024, with no injuries reported at the time.
Searsmont, a town of about 1,500 people roughly 150 kilometres north-east of Portland, depends heavily on Robbins Lumber as its single largest employer, with the wider Maine forest products sector contributing more than US$8 billion to state output in 2024 and supporting around 29,000 jobs across the supply chain. Governor Janet Mills visited the scene on Friday and committed state resources to the recovery effort, telling the Robbins family that “Maine people will have their back” through the rebuild ahead.
Family spokesperson Christian Halsted confirmed the mill would not operate in the near future as Robbins cooperated with the multi-agency investigation involving the Maine State Police, the State Fire Marshal’s Office, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, OSHA, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. First responders escorted Cross’s remains 75 kilometres east from Augusta to a Belfast funeral home on Saturday morning, with the honour procession routed through Morrill to allow residents to pay their respects to Cross, a 27-year-old volunteer killed in the line of duty.
