BREWER, Maine — Firefighters going through the debris of a Friday night apartment fire on Holyoke Street heard a familiar sound coming from the bathroom, according to Brewer fire Capt. Robbie Wildes.
“We went in and we could hear this meowing,” the fire captain said of one cat that survived the blaze at 81 Holyoke St. that broke out at about 8:30 p.m. Friday. “[The bathroom] was all burned out but he got in behind the tub,” which provided the small feline with some protection.
The cat was one of five that lived in the apartment, said a tenant who lived downstairs with her two children but who asked not to be identified.
“We found all five cats,” she said Saturday afternoon just as fire investigator Ed Archer arrived from the state fire marshal’s office.
Archer said he was at the fire scene Friday night and returned Saturday to get a better look at the debris in the light.
The fire broke out on the second floor of the two-story apartment building, Wilde said.
“It’s not really suspicious [but] they’re pretty sure there was a human element,” the fire captain said.
The human element was the upstairs roommate’s two small children, ages 5 and 6, the downstairs tenant said.
“They got a hold of a torch and set their bed on fire,” she said. “They climbed up on a chair to get it off the top of a closet.”
The torch used is a small hand-held device that has a push-button starter, said the woman.
She said after her roommate “came running down the stairs, yelling ‘fire’” she grabbed a fire extinguisher and went up the stairs but quickly turned around when she saw flames.
“I grabbed my kids and my laptop and got out of there,” the 21-year-old mother said.
The two-bedroom apartment on the backside of the baby blue colored building was home to nine people, she said, and more people lived in the front of the apartment building and also were displaced. The Pine Tree Chapter of the American Red Cross is assisting the families, she said.
Brewer firefighters, assisted by crews from Holden, Eddington and Orrington, had the blaze extinguished within about a half hour, the fire captain said.
No people were injured in the fire.