Tenants of a Westbrook apartment house that was condemned for life-threatening electrical code violations say it could be several months before the faulty wiring is fixed and they are allowed to return home.

In the meantime, the 23 tenants of the two-unit, three-story house at 158-160 Brackett St. are living at the Super 8 Motel in Westbrook, supported by the city’s General Assistance program, and waiting for word from city officials on what happens next.

While several of the 11 adults in the group are going to work as usual, the 12 children among them are making the best of the situation, playing in the indoor pool and enjoying other summer activities.

“They’re OK as long as they have a swimming pool,” said tenant Amanda Seavey. “If they didn’t have a pool, they’d be going crazy.”

Seavey said a city inspector told tenants it could be three to four months before repairs are completed and they are allowed to return home. The time frame for repairs remains unclear, according to Fire Chief Andrew Turcotte, largely because the landlord has yet to hire an electrician.

City officials condemned the house on June 18 after a tenant complained to city inspectors and they found multiple code violations in the building owned by Bruce Hepler, a Portland lawyer who lives in Gorham.

While the tenants said they had complained repeatedly to Hepler since electrical problems cropped up in January, Hepler has said he wasn’t aware of the problems until city officials notified him on June 18 and condemned the property he’s owned since 2002.

Hepler couldn’t be reached for comment for this story.

City inspectors visited Hepler’s property that Thursday and found it had only two working smoke detectors, electrical wiring that had been chewed and exposed by animals, several nonfunctioning electrical outlets, overloaded circuits, blocked doorways and a deck with structural deficiencies.

Living conditions were more dire in the five-bedroom apartment on the second and third floors, where a bedroom and a bathroom had been without electricity for months, so the tenants had run extension cords from rooms that still had power.

Seavey and 15 extended family members lived in the upstairs apartment, while Charles Needham, his wife, four children and mother-in-law lived in the two-bedroom apartment on the first floor. Seavey’s family is sharing three rooms at the Super 8, and Needham’s family is living in two rooms there, Seavey said. Needham didn’t respond to calls for comment for this story.

City officials continue to work with the tenants to provide interim housing and other services, and to oversee progress on repairs at the house, the fire chief said Friday. Hepler has yet to hire an electrical contractor, Turcotte said, in part because many firms capable of doing such extensive work are already contracted to do other jobs.

“We do know (Hepler is) making a good effort to hire an electrician,” Turcotte said. “(City officials) are working together to take care of the tenants.”

Turcotte declined to offer a time frame for when repairs might be completed. He said city officials will meet again early this week to coordinate their efforts to address the code violations.

When Westbrook inspectors condemned the Brackett Street house, they noted strong similarities to safety code violations discovered in a multi-unit apartment building on Noyes Street in Portland where six people died in a fire last November.

Portland inspectors found numerous violations in that building, owned by Gregory Nisbet, and in another building that Nisbet owned on Dartmouth Street in Portland. The fire raised calls for more inspections and greater scrutiny of safety code compliance in Portland apartment buildings.

Hepler has promised to fix the problems in his Westbrook property as soon as possible. He attributed the bulk of problems to squirrels getting into the attic, which he said has happened in the past.

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