PORTLAND — It was a quick and quiet affair Friday morning when firefighter Katie Paige left Maine Medical Center.
Amid record heat and on the observed Independence Day holiday, Paige, in a wide-brimmed white hat with her hands bandaged, walked out of the hospital’s back door just after 12 p.m. She traveled past a line of first responders and got into a black truck, before being escorted by an eight-vehicle convoy down the Western Promenade.
It’s been almost two months since a fire and subsequent explosion in a silo at Robbins Lumber in Searsmont killed two and injured at least 10.
Paige, a Belmont firefighter who sustained severe burns when she responded to the incident, was promoted to lieutenant while hospitalized.
The blaze drew more than 100 first responders from dozens of Midcoast towns. Investigators later determined that the fire was an accident, and that an explosion near the base of the silo lifted the structure from its concrete base, engulfing the surrounding area in flames.
The explosion claimed two lives: 27-year-old Andrew Cross, of Morrill, who died at the scene in May, and 76-year-old Assistant Searsmont Fire Chief Wayne Woodbury, who died of his injuries in June.
Paige is the latest person injured in the explosion to be released from the hospital; Montville firefighter Jacob Spaulding went home from Maine Med last month.
At least one other injured firefighter, Chief of Searsmont Rescue Sarah Tompkins, remains at the Portland hospital, where she has had seven surgeries in five weeks, according to a June 22 post on the social media account of the farm Tompkins owns with her husband. Three members of the Robbins family remain hospitalized at Massachusetts General, per a June 25 announcement from the company.
Paige’s husband, Paul, has been diligently sharing her recovery story on social media.
In the days after the fire, he said she was still on a breathing tube and would need several surgeries and skin grafts. She had to have four finger tips on her left hand amputated, according to an update on a GoFundMe page. In early June, Paul announced that his wife had been moved out of the intensive care unit; two days later, he wrote that she was sitting up, eating and talking.
He described setbacks with the skin grafts on her hands, but announced her release from the hospital on Friday.
Neither of them gave a statement Friday morning, but in a post Thursday announcing her impending release, Paul said, “she’s our Hero.”
Because of holiday traffic, the Maine State Fire Marshal’s Office instructed the procession of first responders to meet up with the smaller escort at the Augusta Civic Center and travel with Paige up Route 3 back to Belmont, where she will receive a hero’s welcome.