By Christopher Williams,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Larry Guy was awakened by a commotion in the apartment one floor below.

He walked to the door in his shorts, about to complain to his neighbors when somebody yelled, “Fire!” He could hear an alarm ringing.

Guy pulled on pants, a shirt and sneakers then ran to the door that led to the stairs of the six-level building. He opened it.

“A great big gush of smoke came up,” the 17-year-old said later while standing on Blake Street in the freezing morning. He watched as firefighters chopped with axes through the windows of his top-floor apartment, smashed screens and tore blankets that covered the openings.

In the apartment below his, an emergency worker had carried out the limp body of 4-year-old Anthony Lilly. The boy was rushed to Central Maine Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead. Officials believed the child died of smoke inhalation, although results of an autopsy were pending.

Fire investigators ruled the fire accidental. They said the blaze started in the boy’s fifth-floor apartment, which appears to be the third floor from the front of the building.

The boy’s father, Henry Lilly, was hospitalized with second- and third-degree burns at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

Guy had been trapped on the top floor with flames shooting out of the windows of the apartment below. He’d waited for firefighters to stretch extension ladders up the side of the building to reach his porch.

He climbed down the ladder to safety. So did his cousin. Another cousin, an aunt and Guy’s grandparents had escaped down the staircase earlier.

All left without shelter

Guy was one of 25 people left homeless by the fire that tore through the fifth floor at about 7:15 a.m. Monday, severely damaging the building.

All of the families were housed at the Chalet Hotel, courtesy of the United Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross. They also were given toiletries, food and clothing.

Heidi Bowe stood in a parking lot across the street, a parka covering her pajamas.

“I was sleeping, and all’s I heard was somebody shouting, The building’s on fire.'”

Her boyfriend, Antoni Rembert, went outside from their basement apartment and looked up. “I could see flames shooting up to the sky,” he said.

They grabbed her 12-year-old daughter and “got the hell out of there,” he said.

Smoke billowed from the upper windows of the blue apartment building at 214 Blake St., which had 10 apartments, officials said. Firefighters stood at the end of telescoping ladders yanking trim boards from the roof. Smoke blew in long streams from the openings. Four extension ladders covered the front of the building. Firefighters worked their way floor by floor to the roof.

Somebody called 911 after Henry Lilly shouted on the sidewalk in front of the building that his son was trapped on the fifth floor, fire officials said.

When firefighters first arrived, they found flames shooting from the building and several people trapped on a porch on the top floor, directly above the apartment where the fire started.

Crews quickly got a ladder up, fired jets of water at the flames and pulled people to safety.

“It was a real good rescue,” said State Fire Marshal’s Office investigator Dan Roy Jr. “It all happened very fast when they got to the scene.”

Child didn’t make it

Three firefighters were injured, two with ankle injuries and one with a hurt shoulder. A police officer was treated for smoke inhalation, officials said. All but one were released from the hospital that morning.

They didn’t clear the scene until late afternoon.

“The fire was extremely hard to put out,” said Fire Chief Michel Lajoie.

Two ladder trucks and four pumpers were parked at the scene. Auburn sent a platform truck and a pumper. Lisbon offered a pumper.

The top two floors had smoke and fire damage. The other two floors in the front of the building, plus two below street level in the rear, were damaged by water.

Paul LaPointe, who bought the building just over a year ago, stood shivering as he took in the scene.

He had walked through the place with a city inspector two weeks earlier, he said. All the systems were updated. All of the fire alarms worked, he said.

“The building was in great shape,” he said. It was insured.

Two women walked up to him.

“Anthony didn’t make it,” one of them told him. He left with them to find the boy’s family.

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