ST GEORGE, Maine — Cleanup began bright and early Tuesday morning in Port Clyde.
Ask Andy Barstow, and he'll say it started while his building was still hot. The owner of Monhegan Boat Line welcomed some 50 volunteers to his wharf Tuesday. Throughout the afternoon, employees, friends, and neighbors came and went, shoveling rubble into large bins, and sweeping the ground outside.
"It's great to see so many people, you know, that feel for us and want to help," Barstow said, as he stood in a doorway and looked into the damaged building.
Port Clyde resident and former longtime host of the PBS show "This Old House" Steve Thomas, was among the volunteers.
"At the end of the day, we're gonna do what we have to do for each other," Thomas said. "That's the way it is. That's why I love it here."
Barstow's ferry office was badly burned, but still standing. The general store and restaurant next door - where the state fire marshal's office said the fire started - were total losses. A Thursday statement from the state department of public safety said investigators were still determining a cause.
No one was hurt, but that could have easily changed.
Gerry Cushman docked his lobster boat at noon, after a long morning on the water. He showed us where he had stood Wednesday night and filmed firefighters on the top floors of the restaurant and store.
In one of Cushman's videos, he was astonished to see someone near a window, fighting flames as they seemed to surround them.
Ashleigh Lunt was that St. George firefighter. She said she went in with a colleague from Rockport.
"Every time we hit an area with water, ceiling would come down, and there was just more fire and more fire," she recalled.
Ashleigh had climbed to the top floor of the store to relieve fellow St. George firefighter Mike Lunt, her husband. The couple said, by department rule, and by their own, they aren't allowed to enter a burning building at the same time, because they are parents. And, they said, if something dire happened to one of them, they would make sure it didn't happen to both of them.
The pair spoke with NEWS CENTER Maine on a nearby wharf Tuesday afternoon and looked at the building that they each had climbed. It's now a pile of rubble on the concrete below.
"The first good night's sleep I had was last night," Mike said. "And it's not just processing one aspect of it. It's processing the whole thing."
The Lunts will have to process this. The fishermen and business owners will too. But none of them will have to do it alone.
"It's a way of life that I think that the Maine coast always had," Barstow said. "I think a lot of it goes to the ocean, where when you’re on the ocean, no matter what happens, you have to help each other."
"And I just think that carries through into the community," Barstow added.