An apartment building at 17 South Belfast Ave. in Augusta, seen Wednesday, was damaged by a fire the night before and 19 people were displaced. The building is at the intersection of South Belfast Avenue and Patterson Street. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

AUGUSTA — A fire at a South Belfast Avenue apartment building Tuesday night displaced 19 people, including 10 children, after officials said there were no working smoke detectors in the unit.

Fire Chief David Groder said the fire was accidentally sparked when a tenant warmed oil to cook french fries, leaving the oil unattended. The oil got so hot it left the pan and got onto a burner, starting a fire that spread to a kitchen cabinet and up into an attic space.

No one was injured in the fire.

“For having a fire in a building without adequate smoke detection, this is the best possible scenario,” said Robert Overton, director of code enforcement. “Everyone got out OK.”

Damage from the fire in the three-unit apartment building at 17 South Belfast Ave. was limited to the apartment where the blaze started.

However, the fire damaged the building’s electrical system so power was cut to the entire building. Officials said power can’t be restored until a master electrician inspects and repairs the system, which served the whole building and was separated out for each apartment.

In the meantime, the Red Cross helped the 19 occupants of the building to secure temporary housing in a hotel.

City officials would prefer power be restored to the building before families return. But Overton said the tenants will be allowed back into the building when adequate smoke detectors are in place, even if power hasn’t been restored yet. Battery-powered smoke detectors would be acceptable, he said.

An apartment building at 17 South Belfast Ave. in Augusta, seen Wednesday, was damaged by a fire the night before and 19 people were displaced. The building is at the intersection of South Belfast Avenue and Patterson Street. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Overton said the city recognizes that housing is hard to come by and said the apartment building still has running water and tenants would have a roof over their heads if they have to return before power is restored.

“There’s already a big enough tragedy here, we don’t need to compound the problem by making anyone homeless,” Overton said. “We recommend they don’t (reoccupy the building before power is restored) but we made it clear, we won’t prohibit it. So they could return to the building as long as there is adequate smoke detection in place, and power can’t be turned back on until we authorize it.”

Overton said the building owner, Turki Thamer, said he was working with his insurance company to get funds to make repairs and find an electrician to do whatever needs to be done to the electrical system to make the building safe to be reenergized.

“Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later,” he said.

The tenant who accidentally sparked the blaze while cooking discovered the fire and tried unsuccessfully to put it out, before calling the fire department.

Groder and Overton said the apartment where the fire started did not have any working smoke detectors, with only one smoke detector in the unit, which was hard-wired but had been disconnected. Overton said there were working smoke detectors elsewhere in the building but none of the three apartments had an adequate number of detectors.

Overton, who inspected the building Wednesday morning, said most of the building also did not have code-compliant secondary means of escape, such as windows of the required minimum size, which he said is common in older buildings. According to city assessing records, the building was constructed in 1951.

Bedrooms in a finished basement space had no windows at all, he said.

Overton said he had not sanctioned the owner for the code failures and the city is working with the owner to have those problems fixed.

Groder said if the apartment that caught fire had a working smoke detector, it would have alerted firefighters sooner.

“Working smoke detectors give you early detection,” Groder said. “The one detector in the unit wasn’t working, so the fire got bigger than it needed to be.”

Dan Dowling, regional communications manager for American Red Cross of Northern New England, said its disaster action team was helping nine adults and 10 children who were impacted by the fire and providing financial assistance to them to meet their immediate needs.

Augusta firefighters were on the scene, at the corner of South Belfast Avenue and Patterson Street, from 8:09 to 9:42 p.m. Firefighters from Manchester and Hallowell responded to a call for mutual aid at the fire scene.

Groder said the flames were quickly knocked down by firefighters but a second alarm was sounded to summon other firefighters to help due to the large amount of smoke in the building.

Damage, other than to the electrical system, was minimal, according to Groder. There was water damage to one unit, and fire damage in the unit where the blaze started, but no structural damage to the building.