A known drug house at 149 College St. in Lewiston went up in flames Wednesday. Mark LaFlamme/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — A known drug house on College Street went up in flames Wednesday after what witnesses described as an explosion followed by a rush of fire.

A firefighter was briefly trapped inside the burning building as part of it collapsed, sending crews into retreat. He made it out uninjured.

The blaze at 149 College St. appeared to have started in a garage, according to fire officials. Just 20 minutes after they responded to the 3:30 p.m. blaze, it was reported that the garage roof had partially collapsed.

There were no immediate reports of injury. Several witnesses said that after they heard the explosion, they saw a group of men and women running from the home, the scene of more than a dozen drug arrests since late last year.

“There was this really big boom,” said Arnaldo Cruz, who lives across Holland Street from the burning building. “And then the flames just rose up; these really, red flames.”

Another woman stood on a sidewalk, crying and frantically checking her phone for messages. She lives in an apartment next to the building and was there when the fire began.

“The meth lab exploded,” she said. “And now I can’t find my daughter.”

A Lewiston firefighter hoses down a chair Wednesday afternoon at 149 College St. in Lewiston after a fire destroyed a garage and spread to the house. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Police were blocking traffic for several blocks around the fire scene. Hundreds of spectators showed up at the scene, standing in thick white smoke that wafted across the downtown.

Neighbors said three men and four women had been staying at the house, even though city officials had been working to condemn the building, which has been the subject of four police raids over the past nine months.

Some neighbors said the people who had been occupying a vacant apartment at the house next door ran from the area following the explosion. It was not immediately clear who they were or where they went.

The most recent police operation there was in late July.  A variety of drugs were confiscated during the raids, including fentanyl. oxycodone, crack cocaine and methamphetamine.

The garage that burned, Cruz said, was so full of junk that the owner of the building had been using trailer after trailer to haul it away. As fire crews battled the blaze Wednesday, heaps of various items and trash spilled out into the driveway.

By 7 p.m., firefighters remained at the scene as an investigation into the cause was underway. A Lewiston fire investigator was also on site, interviewing neighbors and other potential witnesses.

The house is connected to the garage via a breezeway in the middle. The garage appeared completely destroyed by fire and the breezeway heavily damaged. It was not clear how much damage was done to the main house, which, over the summer, has drawn the attention of Lewiston safety officials.

A vacant home next to the burning garage also received some damage from exposure to the flames.

Last week, the Lewiston Planning & Code Enforcement Department issued citations to this location for health and safety violations.

“The ongoing citations at 149 College Street, coupled with the fire, clearly show this property meets the definition of a dangerous building,” said Angelynn Amores, the city’s director of marketing and communications. “The Code Enforcement team remains undeterred in its commitment to addressing this location and will proceed with presenting this property to the City Council for designation as a dangerous building on Sep. 3.”

In city tax records, the owners of the building are listed as Matthew R. Brissette and Michelle L. Martin.

The house that burned, a Victorian with mansard roof, was built as a single-family home in 1856. For a brief time decades ago, it was home to the store Grateful Earth.