BIDDEFORD — A fire that displaced 28 people Thursday morning and left one man fighting for his life was intentionally set, authorities said.

Investigators with the Office of the State Fire Marshal spent the morning examining the damaged portions of the apartment building at 35 Main St. and interviewing residents. Late Thursday afternoon they said the fire was arson.

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Biddeford fire fighters return hoses to their trucks after putting out a fire that injured two people. Whitney Hayward/Staff Photographer

Two men were pulled unconscious early Thursday from the upper-level apartments at 35 Main St. in Biddeford. Both were hospitalized and one of them remained in critical condition at Maine Medical Center in Portland. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer

“Investigators say the fire was set on a rear stairwell to the building,” said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. That confirmed the suspicion of residents who said the flames moved quickly to the building’s upper floors.

One man remained in critical condition at Maine Medical Center in Portland, McCausland said. Another man who was hospitalized in critical condition was doing better by late afternoon.

Maine State Police have joined the investigation and are monitoring the conditions of the two men, which could affect any criminal charges in the case. The men’s names will be released once their families have been notified, McCausland said.

Six other people were taken by ambulance to local hospitals, where they were treated and released.

The fire was reported at 3:41 a.m. Thursday and caused extensive damage to the three-story wood-frame section at the rear of the mostly brick building across from the Pepperell Mill complex. The mixed residential and commercial building has a street-level storefront and is next door to One Stop Moving & Storage.

A police officer who was the first to respond pulled a fire alarm in the front section of the building, rousing many of its tenants. The building has 11 units in the front section and three in the rear section, with a total of 28 residents, according to officials and the property manager.

“I woke up to the bells,” said Michael Bridges, who lives in the front half of the building, referring to the fire alarm. “The whole entire back end of the porch was engulfed in flames.”

A woman and her three children, along with two adult men, escaped from an apartment on the first level. The woman received a cut on her knee, but all were treated and released from Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford.

Firefighters doing an initial search before the fire was extinguished maneuvered through the thick smoke to find two men unconscious in upper-level apartments, Biddeford Fire Chief Joseph Warren said. The men had to be carried out on stretchers, according to Warren and witnesses. There was only one access for the upstairs rooms, Warren said.

“We had to bring them right back through the fire area,” Warren said. He said firefighters directed their hoses on the flames, so rescuers only had to contend with heat and smoke.

The rear of the building faces a small parking area accessible only by a narrow driveway and is otherwise surrounded by buildings. That made fighting the fire challenging because of the congestion and the number of victims, Warren said.

“When you’re trying to fight the fire and you have victims on the ground, it’s a close environment to work with,” he said.

Property manager Raymond Herrick, who lives in the front of the building, said his daughter lives in the back with her three children, ages 5, 6 and 13.

“My grandchildren are very upset. They don’t know what’s going on,” he said.

Herrick had been talking to investigators and city officials all morning and into the afternoon. As he spoke about the tenants escaping the fire, he became emotional.

“I know they had smoke detectors because I changed every one of them,” he said, adding that he had installed hard-wired detectors with battery backups. That said, he wasn’t sure they were operating.

“I tell them, ‘Keep them connected,’ but they don’t listen,” he said, adding that sometimes tenants disconnect the smoke alarms when they go off, because of cooking smoke, for example, then don’t reconnect them.

Herrick suspected the arson, speculating that perhaps the fire might have been set by a disgruntled former tenant who had been evicted.

“You kick them out of the apartment building, they want to get revenge,” he said.

The American Red Cross and the city were helping the tenants who had been displaced. Some, like Bridges, worried about the food that was spoiling in his refrigerator since the power was cut off. Others worried that heavy smoke might have damaged their personal belongings.

The property is owned by Nielsen Clark of Englewood, Florida.

The fire appeared to be concentrated on the third floor in the back section, where the two most seriously injured men lived in separate apartments.

Firefighters used ladders to get several people out of the building through windows, Warren said.

A wall separating the two sections of the building apparently prevented flames from spreading to the front.

Firefighters cut holes in the roof to attack the three-alarm fire, and knocked it down fairly quickly, but it still did extensive damage to the interior of the building, Capt. Rick Dussault said.

Crews from Biddeford, Saco, Dayton and Goodwins Mills also responded. Crews cleared the scene by 7 a.m.​

David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @Mainehenchman

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