LEWISTON – Fire that filled a Walnut Street apartment died quickly in the snow Tuesday night after a police officer flung a burning mattress over a porch railing.

Police first cleared the third-floor apartment at 54 Walnut St. before Officer Ryan Guay went inside and attacked the flames as they engulfed a mattress and part of a porch.

“It was roaring,” said Guay, his face streaked with soot. “I put out what I could with my extinguisher. Then I picked up the mattress and threw it over the railing.”

Once outside in the snow, the queen-sized mattress stopped burning. A section of the porch was burned but the damage was mostly limited to the area outside the building.

Nobody was hurt.

Police and fire crews went to Bartlett and Walnut streets after at least one person reported seeing flames between apartment houses at 54 and 56 Walnut St.

Wesley Stover, a 23-year-old who lives on nearby Horton Street, said his girlfriend hollered that something was burning outside their apartment window.

“We could see the fire shooting off the porch,” Stover said. “It was coming right up over the side of it. I picked up the phone and dialed 911. They got here in two seconds.”

Guay and Officer William Rousseau rushed into the building, getting people cleared out before entering the apartment where the mattress was burning.

For Rousseau, it was the second fire in less than 24 hours. He was among the first on the scene of a Lisbon Street late Monday night and helped get occupants of the building out of their homes.

On Walnut Street, fire crews were investigating the cause of the mattress fire. The apartment was occupied at the time, police said, but it was not clear how the fire started.