State fire marshal’s office investigators say smoking was the likely cause of a fire that destroyed the Freedom Center on Gardiner Road in Dresden on Oct. 2.

Investigators ruled the fire accidental.

“This was after an electrical inspection determined there was no electrical issue in the area where the fire started, which was in the back of the building,” a press release states. “That area was also the designated smoking area for the Freedom Center.”

Residents were awoken in the middle of the night, either by fellow residents, smoke alarms or the pandemonium that followed. A dog died in the fire, but everyone else made it outside, and stood in the soaking rain as they helplessly waited for firefighters to arrive.

American Red Cross volunteers arrived on scene while crews still battled the fire. They worked to find hotel rooms for everyone and the challenge then became finding transportation to get them there, as well as getting needed medication for many of the residents.

The Freedom Center opened in 2014 and has served as a Christian faith-based center providing transitional housing for men, who came to the center for a number of reasons. There were a number of optional, faith-based programs taking place at the center as well.

The fire left 10 people homeless. The American Red Cross placed them in a hotel, but funding for that temporary housing ran out Thursday.

Some of the victims have been staying with friends while the Freedom Center works to find more permanent housing.

Keven Vachon, the assistant director of the center, is an ordained minister and was pastor at the church located at the building for eight years before it was converted to the Freedom Center. He said the Freedom Center wasn’t a professional operation and the people living there had outside case workers and counselors to provide services.

There is a big demand for transitional housing in Maine, he said, evident by the many phone calls Freedom Center received. It often had to turn people away because space wasn’t available.

Anyone who wishes to contribute to a fund to help find housing for these 10 individuals can make checks out to the Freedom Center and mail them to: Freedom Center, P.O. Box 234, Dresden, ME 04324.

Vachon stressed the fund is for housing and is not a building fund. However, the plan is to ultimately rebuild the Freedom Center, ideally on the same property which it owns.

“We are going to rebuild somewhere, somehow,” he said last week.

The Times Record Sustaining Sponsor
We believe a community must be informed to thrive. bowdoin.edu