Firefighters from eight departments responded to the June 23 blaze, which heavily damaged a storage facility and attached apartment.
Jun 23, 2026
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BAR HARBOR—A structure fire displaced four people who lived in an apartment in Bar Harbor’s village of Town Hill, Wednesday morning.
The state fire marshal will be trying to determine the cause of the structure fire at 11 West Eden Avenue, June 23, that displaced four people who work in the kayak and bike tour industry.
According to Bar Harbor Fire Chief Matt Bartlett, the fire was in a commercial storage facility with an attached apartment.
“The fire was reported at 10:22 a.m. A second alarm was immediately struck, followed by a third alarm upon the arrival of incident command,” Chief Bartlett said.
When firefighters arrived, there was heavy smoke and flames in the building.
“Their efforts successfully contained the fire, with the bulk of the fire extinguished within one hour. The occupants of the apartment exited without incident, and no firefighters sustained injuries during suppression activities,” Chief Bartlett said.
The Bar Harbor Fire Department remained on scene for several hours to monitor potential flare-ups and to extinguish hot spots in the area which is heavily forested, but has multiple neighboring lots.
It’s believed that the fire began in a storage area and then caught the structure on fire, which became a three-alarm fire. The cause and exact mechanics of the fire are still to be determined.
The property is on a private road just off Route 102.
Carbonfree LLC owns the property, which has storage and an apartment where four individuals who work for Acadia Fat Tire E-bike and Maine State Sea Kayak live. Eben Salvatore, a co-owner of Carbonfree, said that the company rents the apartment to Brad Jordan, who houses employees there.
Jordan wanted to make sure that people know that no lithium batteries are ever stored at staff housing for Acadia Fat Tire E-bike, which is a rumor, he said, spreading across social media.
For now, he’s focused on taking care of his employees.
“We have temporary housing but are looking for a three-bedroom ideally close to Bar Harbor through October,” he said.
He will likely set up a GoFundMe or Amazon Gift Card program for the employees today.
“A huge thanks to Bar Harbor Laundry for doing all their laundry free,” he said of that business taking care of his displaced employees’ laundry.
Eben Salvatore, and co-owner Jeff Young, have both offered Jordan help for those employees.
Salvatore said they’ll be checking on if the wooden-truss building is salvageable. It’s a wooden truss building.
According to scanner traffic, no one was in the building when firefighters arrived.
Salvatore said he and Young were grateful for the fast, efficient emergency response and mutual aid, to the building, which he said was mostly empty storage. There was one electric vehicle in the building, a GEM.
Chief Bartlett said that there was extensive fire damage to the storage facility with smoke damage to the apartment. Neither can be occupied at this time.
At shortly before 11, the traffic was snarled on Route 102, due to the emergency response, and it having become a three-alarm fire. The roadway was shut down afterward and reopened fully at approximately 1:15 p.m.
According Chief Bartlett, firefighters from eight departments responded.
Mutual aid agreements allow area towns to help each other for fires and other emergencies. Versant Power arrived and shut power off to the facility at approximately 11:08 a.m.
“We want to thank all the mutual aid departments that assisted on scene and the departments that provided standby coverage,” Bartlett said.
Videos courtesy of Jeff Young.
QUICK NOTE
We’ll be updating this story and posting additional information about resources for the people who were displaced when we have it.
If you have any ideas for potential housing, please contact Brad Jordan at Brad@mainestatekayak.com.
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