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Mayor's car hit by fire outside home

Mayor Carolyn Kirk's Volvo station wagon - parked outside her family's home on Highland Street in East Gloucester - was destroyed by fire in the early-morning hours today.

The fire, which is not considered suspicious, is believed to have started in a neighbor's truck that was parked behind it and spread from the engine into the rear of the Kirk station wagon.

There were no injuries, but the car was totaled in the blaze. The cause of the fire listed in the Fire report as "undetermined."

Police Det. Steve Mizzoni said "there was absolutely nothing suspicious" about the cause of the fire. Mizzoni said eyewitnesses observed the start of the fire in the Ford 150 truck owned by Peter Shoares, who lives across Highland Street from the mayor.

Shoares reportedly returned to his home in the early-morning hours. His wife Sue declined to be interviewed.

Mizzoni said the fire was believed to have been electrical in origin.

Kirk said she and her husband and two school-age children had to evacuate their home from the rear because of the intense heat. Flames shot up high enough to "impinge" the electrical wires, according to the Fire Department report, and singe the hedges around the Kirk home.

For more on this story, see tomorrow morning's print and online editions of the Gloucester Daily Times.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com