LEWISTON – A paramedic driving through the downtown Tuesday ran to a burning building and burst into an apartment to alert a tenant that his home was ablaze.

United Ambulance paramedic Jeff Chadbourne said he smelled smoke while driving in the area of Pine and Howe streets around 3:15 p.m.

He parked nearby and ran to the source of the smoke, where he found a two-story apartment house on fire at 83 Howe St.

“We just started kicking doors,” Chadbourne said.

Flames were rolling from an outdoor storage unit and spreading up the side of the building when Chadbourne and another man arrived.

Nobody was home in a first-floor apartment, but Chadbourne found a man who appeared to have been sleeping in an apartment on the second floor.

“He looked kind of surprised when we started kicking our way in,” Chadbourne said.

That man escaped without injury, while fire crews made quick work of the blaze before it could consume the entire building.

Most witnesses said they first noticed a heavy smell of smoke in the area before they saw flames shooting from the back of the building near the corner of Howe and Pine streets.

“I was out front, waiting for my kid to get off the bus,” said George Collins, who helped Chadbourne rouse the tenant on the second floor. “I smelled smoke and just came running down here.”

No immediate cause was found by investigators. One woman said she had been told a bag of trash in the outdoor storage unit had caught fire.

“There were flames on that side of the building on the first floor,” said Natasha Walker, who was pushing a baby in a stroller. “I could see the smoke while I was walking down the street.”

Fire crews knocked the flames down within five minutes of their arrival. Fire Investigator Pete Morrell was sent to the scene, as was a police detective.

The blaze remained under investigation Tuesday night.