April 10--LEWISTON -- Someone set a string of pre-dawn fires Thursday morning that left dozens of people homeless and rekindled disturbing memories of a wave of destructive fires a year ago that set city residents on edge.
Fire gutted a pair of apartment buildings at 21 and 23 Howe St. Thursday, displacing seven families and consuming their belongings.
Fire also destroyed a condemned building at the corner of Nichols and Holland streets, which they city was planning to tear down in the coming weeks. Smaller fires at 135 Oxford St. and 28 Howe St. were put out quickly, and an attempted arson at an apartment building on River Street did no damage, fire officials said.
Police Chief Michael Bussiere, referencing the similarity to the fires that raged over three days last year, said additional resources were being assigned to prevent more fires from breaking out. Some 16 fire and police investigators were trying to identify possible suspects, he said.
"I can tell you this is a Priority One investigation for all of us," Bussiere said at a news conference Thursday afternoon in front of 21 Howe St., flanked by Fire Chief Paul LeClair and Sgt. Ken Grimes of the State Fire Marshal's Office.
Rachel Morin, who lives next door to 44 Nichols St. said she felt fortunate that her family escaped unharmed.
Taking pictures of the melted siding on her building, which sits just a few feet from the garage of the condemned building, Morin recalled the anxiety of a year ago when the fires were breaking out across the city.
"This was too close to home," she said, flanked by her two sons, 13 and 10. "We don't need that fire bug back."
Thursday's fires were eerily similar to a year ago, when three fires over eight spring days destroyed nine apartment buildings and displaced more than 200 of the city's poorest residents. Most of those displaced were living in poverty, many of them refugees from war-torn African nations. It took government agencies, volunteers and social workers more than two months to find homes for all of them. All that remains where the buildings burned in 2013 are vacant lots that Lewiston officials have said will likely stay empty for years.
Police charged four people -- two adults and two juveniles -- who they believe were responsible for last year's fires. The case against Bryan Wood, one of the adults, was dismissed after he was found incompetent to stand trial because of his limited intellect.
The case against Brody Covey, one of the juveniles, was dismissed because police failed to read him his constitutional rights before questioning him.
The cases against the other juvenile and Brian Morin, the other adult, are still pending.
LeClair said that no residents were injured in Thursday's fires, though one firefighter received a sprain and bruises in a fall at the Nichols Street fire.
On Thursday morning, Crystal Thompson was wrapped in a blanket from the American Red Cross blanket, staring at the black opening that had been her second-floor bedroom window at 21 Howe St. She said she was waiting to see if firefighters found the pink granite urn that contained the ashes of her infant daughter, who died in 1999.
"It just doesn't make sense to me," she said, positive at that point that the fire had been set intentionally.
Thompson described being asleep in a second-floor apartment when a good Samaritan pounded on her door at 4 a.m., yelling that the building was on fire. At first, she was disoriented and thought it was a burglary. Then she roused her two teenage sons and threw them toward the apartment door.
As soon as they were outside, they heard a series of small explosions, like propane tanks for an outdoor grill.
Thompson said the person who woke her and others of the building's residents may have saved their lives.
Kulmiye Idris, who served as a Marine including a tour in Kuwait, was the one who roused her. He said he was running on adrenaline as the back of the apartment building was engulfed in flames.
Idris had been sleeping peacefully at 48 Howe St., but fortunately, his girlfriend's five month old baby wasn't.
Zhalen was fussy and wouldn't go to sleep, said his mother, Shauwna Conrad.
"My eyes started burning after a while and his eyes are more sensitive than mine," she said. She smelled burning paper. "Then the smoke was coming up here."
Idris opened the apartment door and saw a cloud of smoke. He ran down a flight of stairs to stamp out the fire on a small pile of mail and fliers and then looked down the street.
"There was like a gigantic plume of smoke up in the air," he said. There were no fire or police, he said. He ran down the street and saw a man helping a woman in a wheel chair out of the apartment building. He asked for the building address and called it in to 911, he said.
"The whole back side of the building was on fire," he said. He didn't even realize there was another apartment building there.
Idris ran into 21 Howe St. and up the stairs, banging on apartment doors on the second and third floors and yelling for people to wake up.
Residents, some in bathrobes, some in shorts, spilled bleary-eyed from their apartments. "They were scared and confused," he said.
Thompson said at first she thought it was a joke -- or maybe a burglary.
When she saw Idris silhouetted by smoke-lit by flames, she knew it was real.
Idris said that even in the apartments, he could see the light and smoke from the fire. But he heard no smoke alarms."It was really bad," he said. "It was full blown fire."
He and the other man who had been helping the first floor tenant in the wheelchair, then started waking neighbors in the buildings on either side.
Idris then ran down to Ash Street and flagged down an approaching cruiser.
Idris said he didn't stop to think about his actions, just wanted to do something helpful.
"I hope somebody would do that for us in the same situation," he said.
As fire crews arrived and started battling the fire, Bates College opened at a warming hut at nearby Chase Hall and provided a van to help shelter displaced residents.
By late Thursday, The American Red Cross had found emergency accommodations for all 20 people from seven families that had been displaced, Red Cross spokesman John Lamb said in a statement.
The first fire on Thursday was reported at 1 a.m. when trash was set on fire in a hallway at 135 Oxford St., LeClair said. That fire was put out quickly and investigators have determined that it was intentionally set.
The next call came at 3 a.m. a little more than a mile away at a vacant building at 44 Nichols St. that had placards prohibiting entry because of its dilapidated condition. Morin said neighbors in recent weeks had been trying to get an old mattress and other debris removed from the first-floor landing between the building and the garage.
That fire did extensive damage to the rear of the building and to a garage, LeClair said.
It also destroyed a 2002 Ford Ranger. The owner, who lived next door, awoke at 3 a.m. for her job as a newspaper delivery person and saw the flames. She said she grabbed her 9-year-old son and her cat Bastian, then woke her neighbors. The woman, who declined to give her name, said by the time they escaped, the fire was immense.
At 4:30 a.m., the call came in for the fire at 21 and 23 Howe St. With Lewiston crews still at the Nichols Street fire scene, mutual aid fire crews from Auburn, Lisbon and Sabbattus responded, LeClair said. The department also struck a third alarm summoning all off-duty firefighters to help fight the series of blazes.
"It had a really good head start on us and it had spread to both buildings," LeClair said.
Firefighters could not get inside the building, but worked to extinguish the fire from outside to keep it from spreading to nearby apartment buildings.
The landlord, who declined to be interviewed, said he does have insurance.
Bussiere said that the Nichols Street building will be torn down soon and the Howe Street apartment buildings also will be demolished.
David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:
Twitter: @Mainehenchman
Copyright 2014 - Portland Press Herald, Maine
