SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Maine — A suspicious device found on the local waterfront Wednesday morning was destroyed as a precaution, and state officials are investigating whether it may have posed a threat, according to police.
The device was spotted by a municipal public works employee a few minutes after 7 a.m. at the base of a building wall next to the Lower Town Dock parking lot at the end of Clark Point Road, according to Acting Chief Mike Miller of the Southwest Harbor Police Department. The suspicious object appeared to be a small hand-held propane torch wrapped in duct tape and with wires sticking out the top, he said.
Local police and fire personnel responded and cordoned off the area as a safety precaution and called the Maine State Police Bomb Squad to come investigate, Miller said. At about 11 a.m., a member of the bomb squad wearing protective gear destroyed the device.
The state fire marshal’s office is sending an investigator to the scene to try to determine if the torch may have been intentionally altered to be an explosive device, Miller said. The parking area of the dock was still cordoned off about noon Wednesday as a possible crime scene.
“There’s no threat now,” Miller said about noon. “There will be an investigation.”
The municipal pier and parking area are next to Beal’s Lobster Pier and the local U.S. Coast Guard Station. The eastern end of Clark Point Road was reopened to traffic after the object was destroyed so people could get to and from the lobster pier and Coast Guard facility.
A spokesman with the Coast Guard confirmed that, as a precaution, some personnel had been moved temporarily from the nearby barracks to another part of the station away from the municipal parking area.
It is not the first time in recent memory that a suspected explosive device has resulted in cordoning off a parking lot in the town’s central village. In 2010, a local man inadvertently alarmed local officials when he brought an old hand grenade to the local police station for disposal. The device, which the man left outside in his truck, was removed from the truck by Maine State Police and later destroyed.
