A fire destroys a house on Crow’s Nest Drive in South Freeport on Sunday night. Photo by Freeport Fire Chief Charlie Jordan

A newly installed wood stove that may have malfunctioned is suspected to be the cause of a fire that destroyed a house in South Freeport Sunday night.

Freeport Fire Chief Charlie Jordan said the 1.5-story wood frame home at 29 Crow’s Nest Drive was a total loss.

“There was an extremely heavy volume of fire when we arrived,” Jordan said. The four people who lived in the home – two adults and two children – fled the residence and were not injured.

When one of the adults opened the door to an attached garage, where the wood stove was located, the fire burst through the door and into the home before destroying a Lexus that had been parked in the driveway, according to Jordan.

A neighbor called the Freeport Fire Department around 6 p.m.  Several neighboring fire departments responded to the fire, including crews from Yarmouth, North Yarmouth, Pownal, Brunswick, Durham and Topsham.

The house is located off Lambert Road, a sparsely populated rural road that starts at Route 1 and ends at Lambert Point, overlooking the Cousins River.

An investigator from the State Fire Marshal’s Office will inspect the damage on Monday.