LEWISTON – The city will pull the plug on power to the area surrounding four fire-damaged buildings Saturday to let demolition work continue.

Crews need to turn off several back-alley high-voltage lines before they can continue dismantling the old iron fire escapes behind the Kora, Cressey and Greely buildings on Lisbon Street

“It’s not really safe to work on the fire escapes until they can turn off the power,” said Gil Arsenault, city code enforcement director.

City staffers began notifying neighbors Thursday about the blackout, according to Deputy City Administrator Phil Nadeau.

“If they were not affected by the fire, they won’t be affected by this,” Nadeau said. Power to all the buildings on the west side of Lisbon Street from Pine Street past Ash Street will be turned off. That includes businesses from Dube’s Flowers up to Subway.

“Anyone that will be impacted, we talked to them Thursday,” Nadeau said.

That means crews will take a break Friday from heavy demolition. They’ll concentrate Friday on removing accumulated bricks and other materials from around the demolished buildings and removing asbestos from the boiler room of the New England Furniture building.

The Kora, Cressey and Greely buildings were gutted by a massive fire last week, and the former New England Furniture building damaged beyond repair.

Police say the devastation began late Tuesday night when Timothy Giggey, 27, of Auburn, Douglas Hersom, 26, of Lewiston, and 17-year-old Troy Littlefield broke into the Cressey building and set several fires. Because Cressey is sandwiched between Greely and Kora, the flames quickly spread to the other buildings. It took more than 24 hours for firefighters to extinguish the blaze.

Giggey and Hersom were arrested and charged with arson and burglary. The teenager is being detained at a juvenile facility in connection with the fire.

Crews began demolishing the buildings on Saturday, taking off the Lisbon Street faces of the Kora and Cressey buildings. After a break for the Christmas holiday, they began tearing down the Lisbon Street face of the Greely building Tuesday and knocking down the walls separating the interiors of all three.

The city hired R.J. Enterprises to remove asbestos from the boiler room of the New England Furniture building, and it began work on Thursday. Nadeau estimated the asbestos removal would be finished Friday.

Demolition work will take a break on Sunday and Monday for the New Year’s holiday and resume on Tuesday. Nadeau said crews could have one lane of Lisbon Street open by mid-week but won’t have Lisbon Street back to normal for another three weeks.

“The most important thing for us right now is to do the work safely and quickly,” Nadeau said. “We need to get those buildings down and we need to get the neighboring businesses back so they can operate in a normal way. That’s what we’re concentrating on.”