LEWISTON — Four children escaped a Pierce Street apartment Monday evening after an 8-year-old boy dropped a lit candle, setting a couch on fire.

Lewiston Fire Inspector Paul Ouellette said the fire at 56 Pierce St. was juvenile-related and “accidental.”

The children’s mother, who uses a wheelchair, had previously been taken to the hospital with stomach and leg pain by Jeff Morin, 34, father of the 8-year-old boy and who also lives at the 56 Pierce St. building.

Morin said he left the 12-year-old girls in charge and was gone for only about 10 minutes.

Two apartments on the first floor were occupied, but six to eight other units on the upper floors were empty, according to first-floor tenant Ruth Doughty.

“I don’t have words right now,” Doughty said. “I moved down here (from Howard Street) to get away from the fires. I’m dumbfounded.”

The fire was reported at about 7:12 p.m. Monday, according to police Lt. Michael McGonagle.

Liana Plourde, 12, said she was drawing in her bedroom with her friend, Jada Carey, 12, of 107 Pierce St., when her brother, Cameron Allen, 8, yelled from the living room.

Plourde’s other brother, Jaye’dyn Plourde-Allen, 10, said he was in his mom’s bedroom, charging his cellphone when he heard his brother call out.

Later, Cameron Allen said he was trying to light a candle and dropped it, catching the couch on fire. 

Plourde-Allen said he tried to grab a fire extinguisher off the wall, but it wouldn’t come off so he filled a cup with water and poured it on the fire. When that didn’t work, he ran into his mom’s bedroom, grabbed his phone off the charger and got Cameron, his brother, into the hall where Jaye’dyn called 911 and then his mother.

Meanwhile, the two girls ran across the street to their neighbor’s apartment for help.

“I know the kids,” Glenn Bunnel said. “I see them playing ball all the time and they came and got me. I was watching TV when I heard them banging on my door, yelling ‘fire.'” 

Bunnel ran to their apartment.

“I told the (boys) to get out,” Bunnel said, adding that the smoke alarms were going off when he got there. He found a bucket under the kitchen sink and started pouring water on the living room couch, which was near the kitchen sink. “It took a lot of buckets,” he said.

The back of the couch was in flames and he knocked the couch over to put out the fire, he said.

Carey, the 12-year-old friend visiting, said it wasn’t the first fire she had seen. She lived across from a building that burned down on Pierce Street a few years ago.

When asked how they knew what to do, the children said they learned about fire safety in school. They also said an aunt had given them fire drills where they used to live and they had a fire drill in their current apartment. Carey also said she had been taught by her parents what to do in a fire.

Ouellette said he later showed Plourde-Allen how to correctly release the strap on the fire extinguisher that holds it in place. He said there were three smoke detectors in the home, and two went off in the area of the smoke.

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