Civil action charges landlord with negligence in fatal fire

The mother of a 3-year-old boy who died in an Old Town fire has filed a lawsuit in which she holds her former landlord responsible for failing to install smoke detectors.

Tamika Belanger, now of East Eddington, filed the document last month in Penobscot County Superior Court against Fred P. Tarr and his wife, Jacqueline L. Tarr, of Bangor.

James Belanger perished in the April 23, 1989, fire at the two-apartment building at 69 Hayes St. It was the city’s first fatal fire in about 18 years. According to reports in the days after the fire, he was in the living room, where the fire originated. His mother was able to save his 1-year-old sister, Lynnette.

Fire investigators said the only operating smoke detector in the building was in a basement crawl space. There were none in the Belangers’ first-floor apartment, and a non-functioning one in the second-floor apartment. The tenants of that unit escaped the flames.

Tarr, who said he had believed the Belanger apartment had a working smoke detector, was fined $100 and received a suspended sentence in July 1989 on civil charges that he had failed to install smoke detectors.

The Tarrs were served with a summons in the lawsuit last week. They have 20 days to formally respond to the allegations.

According to the 11-count lawsuit, filed on Belanger’s behalf by Jay Otis, before James Belanger died, he “screamed out for his mother to come to his assistance, but she was unable to because of intense heat and smoke.”

Belanger is charging the Tarrs with negligence and with breach of warranty that the building complied with codes, and claims that their “grossly outrageous actions” and “conscious and reckless disregard” as to the presence of a smoke detector constituted “legal malice” against her son.

She is seeking unspecified compensation and punitive damages for funeral expenses; loss of her son’s companionship; her own emotional pain and suffering, medical and psychiatric or psychological care, and her son’s conscious pain and suffering in his dying moments.

“James C. Belanger would not have suffered and/or have died but for the lack of smoke detectors,” the court document states.