PORTLAND, Maine — A city building inspector responded to the complaint of an illegal dwelling on the third floor of the Noyes Street duplex two years before it burned, killing six young adults, a Portland court heard Thursday. But the inspector testified that he never entered the building.
In the first day of defense witness testimony in the case of Gregory Nisbet, the landlord charged with six counts of manslaughter in the fire deaths, Portland building inspector George Froehlich told the court that he responded to the complaint but never went inside 20 Noyes St. to assess the third floor.
When the building burned on Halloween 2014, two women and a man died in rooms on the third floor, where prosecutors in the case have argued they were trapped. Nisbet gave tenants rope ladders to escape in case of an emergency, but the windows were too small to climb out of, the prosecution has said.
A survivor of the fire also has testified hearing two women screaming on the top floor before he jumped from a second-story window to escape the blaze.
But Froehlich testified that in his Aug. 30, 2012, inspection, he never looked at the third floor. Instead, he interviewed two residents of 20 Noyes St. on their porch and was told there was no new apartment on the third floor, he said. Froehlich said he never asked to enter the building, which two years later would be the site of Maine’s deadliest fire in decades.
“I spoke to a resident of the building and ascertained from them that, in my opinion, there was no illegal dwelling unit,” he said.
The city inspector also said that he had no memory of speaking to Nisbet while looking into the complaint. He wrote “LL no call back” in his notes, according to Assistant Attorney General John Alsop, and the complaint has no date of closure.
Froehlich and another city inspector who testified Thursday, Arthur Rowe, said they were overworked and under a heavy case load. Asked by Alsop if he was overburdened in his work as a code enforcer and property inspector, Rowe replied, “That’s an understatement, sir.”
Those killed were David Bragdon, 27, Ashley Thomas, 29, and Nicole Finlay, 26, who lived in the building, and visitors Steven Summers, 29, of Rockland, Maelisha Jackson, 23, of Topsham and Chris Conlee, 25, of Portland.
City spokeswoman Jessica Grondin declined to comment on whether it was standard procedure at the time of the complaint for inspectors to not enter a building — and if so, whether the city had changed its protocol.
Since the Noyes Street fire, Portland has made a number of changes to how it addresses tenant safety. In 2015, the City Council voted unanimously to create the Housing Safety Office, which keeps a registry of rental properties and employs three full-time housing inspectors to enforce code. Before the creation of the office, the Fire Department had inspected multi-unit apartment buildings but not two-family homes, which are common in Portland.
“I think the fact that the city of Portland did not have a program in place to inspect its housing stock was negligence on the part of the city of Portland,” David Chamberlain, a Portland landlord and tenant lawyer, testified later.
City Councilor Ed Suslovic, who represents the district where the now-razed building had stood, said that the fire forced the city to closely examine how it ensures tenant safety.
“I think the city’s response to the tragedy and the issues uncovered by the tragedy … caused us to take a very hard critical look at what we are doing and not doing in term of ensuring housing safety in the city of Portland,” Suslovic said.
Since the fire, the city also has taken measures to encourage landlords to ban smoking and make their buildings safer, said Suslovic. Investigators found the Noyes street fire was caused by a stray cigarette that ignited a couch on the porch of the duplex.
Under Portland ordinance, landlords — including those of occasional rentals, such as AirBnB rooms — must pay to register their buildings with the city and the fee is reduced if they can show that it is a nonsmoking building.