Question
we have what looks like fire blight on out red maple tree..the left half of the tree(faces sun) is all but wiped out. Leaves and seeds turn brown and branch dies but leaves do not fall. looks just like the fire blight I had on pear tree a few years ago.

Answer
Richard,
I have never run into a case of fire blight attacking any type of maple.
From the description I would have to ask a few questions to narrow down the cause.
Is this a Japanese red maple? and was it sprayed recently with any type of insecticide? If the answer to both of these is yes, then whatever was sprayed on the tree caused a phytotoxic reaction , which led to the death of these branches. I would think that this is the case since diseases rarely affect only one half of a tree.
The second possiblity would be a vascular disease called Verticillium wilt. This internal disease will cause sporadic die back throughout the crown leading to the eventual death of the tree if not controlled.
The third possiblity would be that the tree has a girdled root which is choking off the nutrient flow to that side of the tree. This however, would not show up all at once, but would cause a gradual decline in the tree over several years.
I hope this helped.
Good luck.
Ed Gulliksen