Fire officials are continuing their investigation to determine the cause and origin of the fierce blaze that destroyed a hotel in southern Maine last week.
The wind-fueled fire burnt down much of the Days Inn hotel on the Route 1 Bypass in Kittery, a town along the New Hampshire line, on Wednesday. During an investigation the following day, the body of a person was found in the rubble around 2:15 p.m. Thursday.
It is still unclear how or where the lone victim died. Their identity is awaiting confirmation from the state medical examiner, officials said.
Kittery Fire Chief David O’Brien said building owner Kamlesh Patel has been cooperating with the investigation. The building, valued at almost $1.7 million, is a total loss, O’Brien said.
A person answering a phone at a business listing for Patel said the owner was unavailable and declined to comment further.
Kittery issued violation notices for code problems at the hotel several years ago, O’Brien said. He said every issue that was found was corrected.
The hotel did have fire alarms but did not have any sprinklers. The cause and origin of the fire remain under investigation.
Local
Kittery Fire Chief David O'Brien, who had said he was extremely hesitant to send his firefighters into the building, sat down with NBC affiliate News Center Maine on Friday to talk about how challenging it was for crews.
"They did everything they possibly could; everything. Bar none, they did everything," O'Brien told News Center Maine. "And we sent two people into a building we shouldn’t have, but we got them out instantly. They knew the decision-making process."
One of those firefighters was Phil Posa, who recalled feeling the intense heat as they entered a corridor in the building and having to make a difficult choice to pull out.
"You could tell that nobody was gonna be able to have survived in that area," Posa told News Center Maine. "The conditions were just very poor."
O'Brien estimates that nearly 2,000,000 gallons of water were dumped onto the two-story hotel, News Center Maine reported. He said he hopes Wednesday's fire will be the largest that his young firefighters ever have to face.
The chief also noted that it was the first fatal fire that some of his crews were dealing with, noting there would be help for them.
Firefighters from about 16 area communities in Maine and New Hampshire were called in Wednesday to help extinguish the fire.
