Life-threatening electrical code violations have prompted Westbrook officials to condemn two apartment buildings in the past month, displacing three dozen residents.

Complaints from tenants led the city to inspect the buildings, one last month and the second this week. At both locations, inspectors found violations similar to those discovered after a fire in a Portland apartment building in November that killed six people and prompted that city to beef up its housing-safety oversight.

Westbrook officials say that increased public awareness since the Portland fire, and the hiring of a code compliance inspector this year, made it possible to discover and address the problems with the two buildings before a possible tragedy occurred.

Now, city officials are considering ways to recoup expenses incurred in dealing with problem buildings, potentially by requiring landlords to cover the costs of staff time and emergency housing for displaced tenants.

“I don’t think this is going to be the last one,” City Council President Brendan Rielly said Thursday, two days after a building at 689 Main St. was condemned.

Although the owner of the property is paying for temporary housing for the 12 tenants displaced this week, the 23 tenants who had to leave 158-160 Brackett St. after it was condemned on June 18 are still relying on the city’s General Assistance program to pay for hotel rooms. It may be months before the building is repaired and they can move back into their apartments.

Mayor Colleen Hilton said the city is looking into drafting a local ordinance or pushing for a state law that would require landlords to reimburse communities for such expenses.

The residents of the two-unit, three-story house on Brackett Street moved into the Super 8 Motel in Westbrook after an inspection revealed an insufficient number of smoke detectors, wiring that had been chewed and exposed by animals, several non-functioning electrical outlets, overloaded circuits, blocked doorways and a deck with structural deficiencies.

In a five-bedroom apartment on the second and third floors, tenants had run extension cords into a bedroom and bathroom that had been without electricity for months.

On Tuesday, the city condemned the eight-unit building on Main Street after finding smoke detectors that weren’t working, exposed wiring and outlets that had short-circuited.

The tenants were moved into motel rooms paid for by the building’s owner, City National Bank of Beverly Hills, California, which foreclosed on the property in November.

The city’s fire inspector said the problems were almost identical to those on Brackett Street. City officials had previously noted the similarities of violations there to those found at the site of the deadly fire on Noyes Street in Portland.

The fire led Portland to create a housing safety task force, which recommended creating an office specifically to oversee rental units.

The Portland City Council voted Monday to create a five-person housing safety office that will be responsible for inspecting thousands of rental housing units, enforcing housing codes and addressing unsafe living conditions.

The Portland council also enacted new ordinance language that requires every landlord to register with the city and pay a $35-per-unit fee, which will cover the $335,000 cost of the new office.

Since 2001, Westbrook has conducted biannual safety surveys of its nearly 300 buildings containing three or more units, said Fire Chief Andrew Turcotte.

This year, the city adopted the International Property Maintenance Code and hired David Finocchietti as its code compliance officer, a new position, to better address complaints that can range from trash piling up in yards to deteriorated buildings.

“We believe we have struck an appropriate balance between our routine safety inspections and our complaint-based system,” Hilton said in an email Thursday. “Educating tenants and encouraging them to be our eyes and ears is also important.”

City Planner Molly Just said Thursday that the city’s downtown is full of old buildings that give the area character but are expensive to maintain. Some property managers do a better job than others, she said.

Still, Just said, it is uncommon for the city to condemn a building. She didn’t know when it last happened, before last month.

“It takes a lot to do that,” she said.

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