enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Firefighters are joined by the Coast Guard to help battle the blaze at the Washburn & Doughty shipyard, where two tugboats like the one in the background were being built.

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A staircase is all that remains of one section of the boatyard building as firefighters attack the flames. It took firefighters from a dozen towns nearly four hours to bring the blaze under control.

enlarge Photos by John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Building embers burn as firefighters check the wreckage of a major fire at the Washburn & Doughty boatyard in East Boothbay, which destroyed a building and two tugboats under construction Friday.

BOOTHBAY — Teenager Aaron Koss was awakened Friday by a car alarm in the Washburn & Doughty Associates parking lot next to his house.

Shortly after that, he heard a fire alarm from the old shipbuilding yard and smelled the smoke being carried by the wind toward his house.

It wasn’t long before he saw flames coming out of a century-old building.

“Of course it was going to go up fast with dry wood and (being) over 100 years old,” said Koss, 17, whose stepfather’s grandfather helped build the structure in the late 1800s for what was then called Rice Brothers boatyard.

Fire swept through that structure Friday, destroying the building and two tugboats that were under construction. The blaze caused an estimated $30 million in damage at Washburn & Doughty, which has more than 80 employees, none of whom was hurt.

It took dozens of firefighters from several towns nearly four hours to bring the blaze under control. Firefighters were hampered by frequent explosions of diesel fuel, acetylene and propane gas tanks.The 50,000-square-foot assembly building, which housed the tugs and company offices, was destroyed.

Black smoke could be seen from miles away.

By the time firefighters were focusing on reaching hot spots, all that was left of the building was a large aluminum door that stood at one end and a metal stairway at the other. Both looked ready to topple.

In between were the under-construction metal tugboats, covered in soot and steaming whenever they were hit by the spray from hoses.

The fire, which broke out just after 9 a.m., was so intense that the paint melted on the side of a worker’s pickup truck in the employee parking lot, about 100 feet from the building in the village of East Boothbay.

Before fire companies arrived, several workers tried to put out the flames, using fire extinguishers and a hose connected to a landing craft berthed at the pier that was equipped to draw water from the harbor.

Boothbay Fire Chief Dick Spofford said two firefighters were overcome by heat, but they were treated at the scene. He said about a dozen towns sent equipment and firefighters to help with the blaze.

Red Cross volunteers circulated, handing out sandwiches and bottles of cold water.

“We’ve got almost all of Lincoln County here,” Spofford said

Several Coast Guard boats also arrived. One kept other boats away from the area that was burning and another took firefighters with a portable pump to areas that land-based crews couldn’t reach.

Crews are expected to be on the scene today to prevent flare-ups of the smoldering debris. The fire started near the roof and water-side doors of the cavernous wood-frame building, which had asphalt shingle siding, said Dan Young, senior investigator for the state Fire Marshal’s Office. One of the tugboats under construction was within a few feet of the side of the building, he said, and investigators are trying to determine what work was going on in that part of the boat justs before the fire.

Young said workers might have been cutting, welding or grinding, and sparks from “any one of those could do it.”

Young and other investigators will rely on interviews with workers to help determine the cause. His supervisor said there won’t be much physical evidence to go by.

“The building’s not there anymore, so the building’s not going to tell us much,” said Sgt. Ken Grimes of the Fire Marshal’s Office.

Gov. John Baldacci put out a statement Friday afternoon pegging damage at $30 million or more. Young noted that the engines for the tugs alone are worth several million dollars each.

The Red Cross opened an evacuation center at the Boothbay Region Elementary School, but closed it later Friday afternoon once power was restored to the neighborhood around the boatyard....