BIDDEFORD — Alicia Herrick was sound asleep early Thursday when she heard someone pounding on the front door of her apartment at 35 Main St. screaming that there was a fire – so sound asleep that she thought it was a dream and rolled over and closed her eyes.

Then someone was shaking her shoulder, urging her to get up.

She grabbed her 5-year-old son and ducked out the front door.

“The flames were right at my head. Chunks of tar from the roof, hot bubbling tar, was falling on our heads,” she said Monday.

The fire, which investigators say was set in a stairwell, broke out just before 4 a.m. and is being blamed for the death of Michael Moore, 23. Moore and James Ford, 21, were sleeping in their bedrooms in the finished attic space when the fire started and were overcome by smoke.

Moore died Friday afternoon. Ford’s condition improved over the weekend from critical to serious.

The investigation is now being led by the Maine State Police, which investigates almost all homicides in Maine, with the Office of State Fire Marshal focusing on the fire itself and the possibility of code violations in the building that may have contributed to the death and injuries.

The building’s 25 residents are searching for new housing after receiving temporary help from the American Red Cross, the city of Biddeford and local churches. The residents’ security deposits have been returned and some were able to retrieve items from their apartments Monday, they said.

After the fire broke out and Herrick was roused, she squeezed her son, Kayden, to her chest as she ran for the front door. Confused, he struggled against her.

Kayden and his sister Alanah, 7, both have special needs, and Herrick worried that Alanah might try to hide if she became frightened. Someone – her boyfriend or the other man who shares the first floor apartment with them – told her the girl was already outside with her older sister, 13-year-old Keauna.

As Herrick left the apartment, she could the hear the fire popping like wood at a bonfire, she said. The sirens of the fire engines grew much louder as she stepped through the door.

“The window right above the front door ended up bursting because the fire had spread so much. … We were walking on burning glass,” though it might have been other material burning around the glass, she said.

As she ran toward Main Street from the back of the building down the steep driveway, Herrick tripped on fire debris, injuring both knees, her hip and her elbow, but she managed to twist as she fell so that her son escaped with a small scrape on his elbow.

Her boyfriend grabbed Kayden and helped her to her feet as debris continued to fall around them, she said.

She also has pain in spots on her head. That may be from her fall, or from the debris that was falling as she and her family fled.

Outside, it was chaos at first.

“There were a few people who shouldn’t have been there because they don’t live in the building,” Herrick said. She figured it was too soon for onlookers to have gathered at that time of night.

She looked for Moore and Ford.

“They’re really, really good kids,” she said, adding that they often interacted well with her children. “They didn’t have loud parties. They weren’t punks.”

Then rescue workers were compelling her to get in an ambulance to be taken to Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford, where her injuries could be treated.

“It’s still all kind of a dream, a horrible vivid dream,” she said. “It was terrifying for my children.”

The day after the fire, Herrick was able to get her eight reptiles that had survived the fire and the cold of that night. She cares for or owns three snakes, including a green tree python, two geckos, two lizards – a bearded dragon and a water dragon – and an albino Pacman frog. For now they are staying with her brother, she said.

Herrick returned to the building Monday after the scene had been released by the State Fire Marshal’s Office. She was able to retrieve her washer and dryer, a hutch and some other items, though many of the family’s possessions were ruined by smoke and water.

The city arranged for the family to have an apartment to stay in for a month while Herrick searches for another one she can afford. Friends have offered to hold fundraisers to help the family get back on its feet.

Herrick said after the ordeal, she is looking to live outside the city.

Authorities continue to investigate the arson and have not yet made an arrest. They have not said whether they have identified a suspect in the case or a motive.

 

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