PORTLAND, Maine — Nathan Long, 24, is having a difficult time right now, a few days after escaping Maine’s deadliest fire in 30 years. Three of the five people killed in the Saturday morning fire were housemates who were as close as family, he said.
“I’m thankful to be alive,” Long said Tuesday. “But it’s an incredible sense of guilt, to be alive, and to have people I love that didn’t make it. It’ll stay with me a long time. Even just looking at their pictures sets me off. I say out loud: ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you guys.’”
Long, who moved into the rambling Noyes Street apartment 18 months ago, said that the housemates were close-knit and caring. Despite some media reports, they did not live in a rambunctious party house, but rather a comfortable home where the housemates often cooked together and had a “friendsgiving” celebration last Thanksgiving.
“We were really close,” he said. “We were family.”
Long was the first of the housemates to move into Noyes Street, which is what they called their house. Previously, it had been known as the place to hang out and have a good party, but as previous tenants moved out and others moved in, it became something different. A lot of that had to do with Nicole Finlay, 26, who moved in after him and then filled the house with her friends as rooms opened up.
Her best friend was Ashley Thomas, 29, a wedding photographer who took a maternal role in their home, Long said.
“If we had an electric bill, we’d give her money to pay it. She was very responsible,” he said of Thomas. “Once Nikki was there, especially once Ashley was there, it turned into our home.”
Thomas loved her little dog, Daisy, whom she had dressed in a pumpkin costume on Halloween while they waited for trick-or-treaters to come by. The housemates had all cleaned and decorated the house for the gathering they planned to hold on Saturday night, and Daisy, who also perished in the fire, was going to have a different costume — an Ewok. Thomas was planning to dress as Princess Leia and David Bragdon Jr., 27, a musician who grew up in Rockland, was going to be Han Solo. The housemates had not held a party on Friday night, he said.
Long said that he went to bed early on Friday night, because he had an early shift loading trucks at the L.L. Bean warehouse in Freeport. He didn’t know that their neighbor, 25-year-old Christopher Conlee, who went by the nickname “Miles O’Smiles,” had apparently spent the night at Noyes Street and also been killed by the fire. Long said he never met the fire’s fifth victim, a young woman from Topsham named Maelisha Jackson.
“I live with five other roommates. We all have our own friends,” Long said. “People would crash on our couch all the time. We were very hospitable.”
Previous media reports said that Jackson, 24, was friends with Finlay.
Fire officials said that all five died of smoke inhalation.
According to Long, previous tenants had disconnected the smoke detectors and they had never hooked them back up.
“We’re all adults. We’re all responsible,” he said. “You never think a fire is going to happen to you.”
He said that his landlord Greg Nisbet is a good guy, who would give his young tenants some wiggle room if they were a few days late on paying rent — $350 apiece.
“I feel like Greg is being rung through the ringer,” Long said. “Although it was a hands-off approach to our house, he had someone inspect the furnace two weeks ago.”
Federal and local officials are investigating what caused the fire, and said Monday that all possible causes are still on the table, including arson.
Long said that another housemate, Justin Irish, did not spend the night at Noyes Street. Steven Summers, 29, of Rockland, was visiting Bragdon that night and suffered severe burns in the fire. He is being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he was listed in critical condition on Tuesday afternoon.
Long woke up at 7 a.m. on Saturday, either because of his alarm or because of the smoke that was coming into his bedroom. He saw the orange glow from the fire from outside his window, called 911 and ran down the hall to wake up survivor Kyle Bozeman, 23, yelling to his housemates that there was a fire. It was smoky inside the home, and impossible to go upstairs to the other bedrooms. The two men escaped out the second-story window, jumping first to a porch overhang and then to the ground.
There they watched, full of adrenaline and panic, as the fire consumed the house. Long had escaped in just his underwear, carrying only his telephone, and was grateful to accept clothes that bystanders gave him that cold, blustery morning: socks, boots, a pair of jeans, a blanket.
Long said he is haunted by the might-have-beens.
“I wish more than anything I could have gone up there and woken them up,” he said. “My girlfriend and my family are telling me maybe if I went upstairs, I wouldn’t have made it out. It honestly destroys me, thinking did I have time? Did I not? It’s going to eat at me forever. They were such loving people. No one deserves what they got. Especially not them.”