WESTBROOK – It will still be a couple of weeks before Joan Collison can move back into her Main Street apartment, which was damaged in a fire Sunday. But she’s fine with that, as long as the building’s safe when she returns.

“I am not going back through that again,” she said about a fire that displaced her and 14 other tenants of the seven-unit building at 402 Main St.

After spending the beginning of the week at Howard Johnson on Riverside Street in Portland, courtesy of the Red Cross, Collison said she and at least a few other tenants would be staying temporarily at other buildings in town owned by their landlord, Frank Coyne.

“It’s good enough for now for us,” said Collison, who lived in the apartment with her husband and their daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter.

No one was injured in the fire, which started Sunday morning. After an investigation by the city’s police and fire departments, Detective Sgt. Patrick Lally said they have ruled the fire accidental, caused by “carelessness with tobacco products.”

Tenants, who gathered in Collison’s hotel room Monday, said much of their food and furniture was destroyed by the smoke.

“Nothing prepares you for it,” said Mary Brown, who was living in the building with her boyfriend. “It’ll make you cry, which is basically all I’ve been doing lately.”

Luckily, the neighbors said, they’re a tight-knit community.

“Everybody is all about helping each other,” said Collison.

Richard Pratt, who had just moved into the building with his wife Latoya Williams in February, said it was sometime between 6 and 7 a.m. on Sunday that he first smelled smoke. After checking his oven, he went out in the hall and found the smoke coming from the apartment above theirs.

“I realized, ‘Yeah, we’re in trouble,'” Pratt said.

He knocked on Collison’s door and they set off waking up the rest of their neighbors.

Gathered outside, most of them in pajamas, they watched the smoke and flames coming from the bedroom of tenant Mathew Gammon, whose apartment was where the fire started, according to the fire department.

“The shade was melting right off the window,” Collison said.

Coyne said Gammon hadn’t slept in his apartment the night before the fire started. He said Gammon’s apartment was rendered uninhabitable and one other apartment was severely damaged.

Frank Coyne stands outside the building he owns at 402 Main St., where a fire Sunday displaced his 15 tenants. (Staff photo by Leslie Bridgers)