LEWISTON — In those first terrifying moments, Mykey Marquis didn’t really believe the building was going to burn to the ground. He only knew that something was on fire and he had to get outside as quickly as possible.

Mykey Marquis was burned out of his apartment at 172 Blake St. in 2013. (Submitted photo)

“Everyone was trying to grab what they could from their apartments,” Marquis recalled. “I thought, ‘I’m just going to get the hell out of here.’ I didn’t think the building was going to burn down.”

Within minutes, standing shoeless in the heat of the flames, Marquis knew better. The building at 172 Bates St. was fully ablaze along with two others. The fire was immense and nothing of value would survive it.

It was April 29, 2013, in downtown Lewiston. Marquis’ life changed that day, and not for the better.

‘I LOST EVERYTHING’

Investigators would later say the fire had been intentionally set behind a tenement at 105 Blake St. at about 4:30 p.m. The blaze spread quickly; a few minutes later, buildings at 172 Bates and 82 Pine also were in flames.

For Marquis, 49 at the time, it was a rough welcome to the neighborhood: He had moved in just two weeks ago after undergoing surgery on his neck. He had been planning to get apartment insurance at the start of May.

Marquis vividly remembers the day of the fire.

“I had just cleaned the kitchen and I was getting in the shower,” he recalls. “All of a sudden I heard this big boom! I looked out the window and the porch was on fire. I just grabbed clothes and ran out. I left my false teeth behind. I left my pills, too, because I didn’t think the building was going to burn. I lost everything, even my false teeth.”

On that wild afternoon, it seemed like half of the downtown was ablaze. It would get crazier still in coming days as a series of set fires terrorized the community.

For Marquis and dozens of others burned out of their homes, those were grim times. Marquis, already suffering health problems, was left — literally — with the clothes on his back.

He got a lot of help, he said, from services, including the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Trinity Episcopal Church.

The Red Cross put him up in a motel for a time, and through the Maine Department of Health and Human Services he was able to move into an apartment building in Lisbon.

“When I moved into my apartment, I had nothing,” Marquis said. “Nothing. The Trinity Church worked with the Red Cross and got us furniture and that kind of stuff.”

Long before he got settled into a new place, Marquis returned to Lewiston hoping to find something he’d left behind. Maybe, he thought, the fire crews could help him search the rubble.

“When I came back to the area, I was going to tell them to look for a fire box. I had $5,000 worth of diamonds in it,” Marquis said. “But the building was gone. They took it down that quick.”

In the five years since, Marquis has struggled. The neck surgery had gone bad and he got an infection in his throat. His vocal cords were damaged and at one point, a medical tube pierced his esophagus.

Marquis was treated at a Boston hospital and underwent at least 13 procedures. His weight went down to 82 pounds and had to eat through a tube.

It’s since been a long climb out of the darkness.

“I had to learn to walk all over again and how to talk all over again,” he said. “I’m just getting back to being normal.”

Yet even with all that misery and pain, Marquis isn’t bitter, even after learning that the fire had been set by a 12-year-old boy.

“I was kind of pissed off at first,” Marquis says. “But I don’t blame the kid. It was because of mental health issues and that kind of thing.”

ANKLE DEEP AT HEALY TERRACE

When the building at 105 Blake St. went up in flames, the dozens who live at Healy Terrace Apartments had a terrifying front-row seat to the chaos.

“I smelled smoke,” recalled Susan L. Charle. “I looked out the window in time to see the back of that building pretty much explode into flames. It was quite something. I’d never seen anything like that before. It was quite scary, frankly.”

Healy Terrace, formerly the Intown Manor, was never in danger of catching fire, but in a blaze of that size, chaos comes in many forms.

As firefighters from several towns battled flames that spread across three buildings, water from their hoses had to go somewhere.

“Gallons and gallons and gallons of water just went cascading down the hill and into our apartments,” Charle said. “We wound up being evacuated because the water that came into the building was up just about to our ankles. The Fire Department came by and said, ‘OK, everyone needs to get out.'”

At Healy Terrace, carpeting in apartments on the ground floor was soaked through and furniture was ruined in the deluge. The area reeked of smoke for days and demolition was ongoing at the scene of the burned buildings.

Tenants of Healy Terrace returned to their homes a few days later, but reminders of the fire were all around them.

HEAT, SMOKE AND SCREAMS

Julianna Barnard lived across the street from the building that burned on Blake Street and broke her foot during the evacuation. She remembers with grim clarity the way the horror unfolded, and one memory in particular sticks with her.

“I remember when it happened, I looked out of my window,” Barnard said. “There was a woman just standing in the middle of the street.”

The woman, Barnard says, was wearing a hospital bracelet and holding a newborn baby.

“I ran to make sure she was OK,” Barnard recalled. “I opened the front door and it was like opening an oven door — the heat was incredible. I went and grabbed her. She said her dog was inside — she had nothing — she just grabbed her baby and got out. I think a family member came and got her, not sure. It seemed like seconds later we were evacuated.”

Teshia A. Cote also lived on Blake Street near the building that burned.

“I felt the heat,” Cote said. “I heard the screams. I smelled the harsh smell of smoke. It was sad. I remember the people lined in the streets looking at the devastation going down around them. It definitely was a sad day for many who lost their memories and their belongings, leaving with nothing but what they had on. It was so sad. Many people I knew lost everything.”

Among those people, Cote said, was her husband, who at the time lived with his mother in one of the buildings that burned at Blake and Pine streets.

Her husband didn’t want to talk about it, but Teshia Cote said he is still haunted by memories of the life-changing blaze.

“My husband developed (post-traumatic stress disorder) from it because he was sleeping when this all went down,” Cote said. “He didn’t sleep good for a year after that — the sound of fire alarms would scare him.

“It’s gotten a little better now,” she said, “but he still has moments.”

[do_widget id=td_block_7_widget-8]