LEWISTON – A cab driver dropping off a passenger was credited with rushing to the aid of a man and his year-old granddaughter Tuesday as flames blazed through their apartment on Strawberry Avenue.

Val Rattie, 63, said he was upstairs changing the baby’s diaper when he smelled smoke from the first floor. When he went downstairs, flames were rolling up a kitchen wall.

“I came down the stairs and it was filled with smoke. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t get to the cell phone,” Rattie said. “The baby was screaming like a banshee. I grabbed a blanket, got the baby and got everybody out of there.”

Rattie said he had been cooking fries and baby scallops when the stove caught on fire at about 2:15 p.m. A 4-year-old granddaughter was outside playing and an 8-year-old was at school when their home at 95 Strawberry Ave. went up in flames, Rattie said.

The family of five and another family from an attached apartment were left homeless by the blaze that burned through the roof of the building. Two cats perished in the fire while other pets survived.

Cab driver Jamie Vachon was driving through River Valley Village, formerly Tall Pines, when he spotted smoke pouring from the two-story apartment building near the center of the apartment complex. Vachon parked his cab, ran to the burning building and met Rattie at the door.

After getting the child outside, Rattie was trying to get back into the blazing building.

“I pushed him back and said, ‘Don’t go in there.’ It was fully engulfed,” Vachon said. “The whole side of it was all in flames.”

Vachon had a fire extinguisher from his cab but found that it was too late to combat the fire that appeared to start on the stove.

“I don’t know how he got out of there,” Vachon said. “You couldn’t see anything. I got as far as the door. It was all smoke.”

The baby was carried to safety in a nearby building. Rattie and Vachon turned their attention to getting tenants out of an adjacent apartment and from nearby buildings.

“I said, ‘Get everybody out of here. This whole building is going to go up,'” Vachon said. “Smoke was rolling right out of there.”

Flames moved quickly to the top floor of the building. Within minutes, as firefighters and police were on the way, the fire burned through the roof.

“Fire was coming up the side of the building,” said 15-year-old Troy Stickney, who lives nearby. “Flames were shooting up six feet over the roof.”

Arriving fire crews attacked the flames from the ground and from ladders hoisted over the burning building. Responding police and firefighters maneuvered into the apartment complex, contending with thick traffic and buses as school children were returning from classes.

“I opened my door, waiting for the bus, and saw all this smoke,” said Linda Bell, who also lives in the apartment complex. “It’s a hard time of day for something like this, with all the kids coming home from school.”

Rattie and his granddaughter were examined for possible smoke inhalation but neither suffered serious injuries, fire officials said. While crews fought the blaze, Rattie sat on a gurney, head in hands, trying to recall what had gone wrong.

“I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “I don’t know if the pan had a leak in it and grease dripped out or what.”

While firefighters got the blaze under control, fire investigators Paul Ouellette and Pete Morrell began interviewing witnesses. Later, Ouellette said the cause of the fire was cooking oil that overheated while Rattie was upstairs.

“By the time he came back down, it was too late for him to do anything about it,” Ouellette said.

Two dead cats were found inside the burned building. A third cat was found alive and placed into a cage to be returned to its owners. A fourth cat was alive but elusive.

“It’s a white cat,” Ouellette said. “We kept seeing it running around but we couldn’t catch it.”

A pet snake was also rescued from one of the burned apartments, though it was not immediately clear which one.

Ouellette estimated damaged to the building at $200,000.

Fire officials contacted Timothy and Audrey Smiley, parents of the children who live in the building that burned. Both parents were believed to be at work when the fire started. Rattie said he had come up from Massachusetts on Monday to baby-sit for his daughter.

Vachon, the cab driver, remained at the scene speaking with fire investigators an hour after the blaze was reported. The Red Cross was called to assist the two families displaced by the fire. They were staying at the Chalet Motel Tuesday night.

“I’m just glad everybody got out,” Vachon said.

Fire officials were glad Vachon was on the scene as well, crediting him with keeping a cool head and with making sure tenants were out of the burning building and the apartments near it.

“He made a big difference,” Ouellette said. “We’re thankful for that.”