Owner faces charges over fatal Bangor apartment house fire

BANGOR – Charges have been filed against the owner of a Bangor apartment house where a man died in a November fire.

Robert Cort of Hampden was charged earlier this week with violating a provision of the state fire safety code, a Class E crime, Penobscot County District Attorney Christopher Almy said Friday.

Cort faces a “substantial fine” for not having installed smoke detectors or for not having working smoke detectors in the building, according to Almy.

The owner of the Perkins Street building is scheduled to appear in 3rd District Court in Bangor on Feb. 23.

Owners of apartment buildings are required by the State Fire Code to have working smoke detectors in all units and some hallways. The fine for noncompliance is up to $500 per violation, according to the state Fire Marshal’s Office.

The cause of the Nov. 6 fire, which started in a first-floor apartment, was ruled an accident by officials the next day.

Robert Beale, 31, lived in the first-floor apartment of the three-unit apartment building. He was injured when he tried to re-enter the building to save his friend, 30-year-old Stephen Chase of Bangor, who was visiting.

Firefighters found Chase’s body inside a walk-in closet. The apartment consisted of only two rooms – a kitchen and a combination living room and bedroom, according to public safety officials.

Two tenants of the other apartments escaped the fire uninjured. The upstairs tenant reported the fire at 4:37 a.m. on Nov. 6. When firefighters arrived, flames were shooting out the front and back windows and had crawled into the walls and up into the roofline.