Searching for victims of Thursday’s fire in Biddeford was especially difficult because the apartment building had only one stairway leading to its second and third floors, said Lt. Eric Wheeler, who led the Biddeford Fire Department’s effort to get residents out of the Main Street building.

“This would be the worst in terms of not being able to perform a search as fast as we wanted to,” said Wheeler, who noted that investigators believe the fire was set in the single stairwell leading to the building’s upper floors. “The fire had to be dealt with, we couldn’t go around it, but for this time of day, you know people are sleeping and potentially trapped. So we all feel that extra sense of urgency and we have to get up there and search.”

Firefighters eventually got all the residents out of the building, but two residents on the top floor had been overcome by smoke and were unconscious. One of those two men, Michael Moore, 23, died at Maine Medical Center Friday afternoon. The other man, James Ford, 21, was in critical condition Friday, but was expected to survive.

Wheeler said he and four firefighters got to the building shortly after the call came in about 4 a.m. He said the other four firefighters on duty and the captain in charge were at another call at the time.

A deputy chief who had been off duty arrived quickly, Wheeler said, and he took command of the firefighting effort, dispatching Wheeler and two other firefighters to look for residents inside.

As they entered the building, Wheeler said, the fire was “just really blowing out,” but the smoke wasn’t so heavy that they couldn’t see.

The three cleared the first and second floors, Wheeler said, and took out one man who was still sleeping as the smoke was building up in his apartment.

Saco firefighters, who showed up just minutes after their Biddeford counterparts, helped three residents escape by climbing out of windows and down a ladder.

By the time Wheeler and the other firefighters had declared the first two floors clear, the smoke was getting heavy, he said, and it was difficult to find the stairs from the second to the third floor.

Once they did, he said, they found the two unconscious men on the top floor.

“We knew initially they had suffered a lot of smoke inhalation,” Wheeler said.

They carried the two men out and Wheeler credited Jason Crocker, a Biddeford firefighter/paramedic, with caring for the men immediately while waiting for another ambulance to arrive.

“You see movies where firefighters are peeling off their masks and starting CPR? Well, that’s pretty much what happened,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said the close relationship between the fire departments in Biddeford and Saco helped in fighting the fire and getting residents out. He said each city automatically sends a truck and firefighters to a fire in an adjacent city and crews constantly train with each other.

“We basically double our manpower,” he said. “We took one side of the building and Saco knew what they had to do. We basically train for this scenario all the time. We all know each other and you get used to working with the guys. It’s a true partnership.”

Copy the Story Link