The Building and Code Enforcement Office in Brewer, Maine, said the Bow company which installed an apparently faulty heating system that sickened many tenants in an apartment complex in that town did not have a permit to do so.

“I am confident they never received a permit,” said David Russell, the building and code enforcement official for Brewer, adding the Maine licensing board and the state fire marshal’s office are investigating whether Concord Gas Heating Service of Bow was even licensed to work in Maine.

Repeated calls to the Bow gas company and Keystone Management, in charge of the property, were not answered by press time.

The 31-unit apartment complex in Brewer was evacuated on Monday, Aug. 4, after emergency crews responded to several calls in a row between Aug. 3 and Aug. 4.

The problems started when Lisa Ouellette, 43, was found passed out on the floor of her apartment on Aug. 3. She was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bangor, Maine, and was placed in critical care, but at the time, the cause of her symptoms were still unknown.

Several members of Ouellette’s family showed up to spend the night in her apartment to be close to the hospital, and in the morning, all of them were sick. Ouellette’s niece Kristina MacKenzie, 24, is a nurse who works the third shift, and called 911 on the morning of Aug. 4.

“I had worked the night before and got home at about 8 a.m. I couldn’t sleep, and I woke up at 10 a.m. with (heart) palpitations,” MacKenzie said, adding she was also dizzy and nauseated. “I stood up, and then immediately fell to the ground. Everybody else was sick too, they were crawling around the room,” she said.

It was then that MacKenzie realized the cause was likely carbon monoxide poisoning. MacKenzie and another family member were placed in hyperbaric chambers and later given a clean bill of health.

St. Joseph Hospital spokesman Bethany McKnight said she could not release any information on Ouellette’s condition, because she hadn’t filled out the proper release.

“We had seven people who came in, and all were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning,” McKnight said. “Three of those were in our hyperbaric oxygen chambers.”

Russell said the fumes from the heating system escaped into a crawl space right under Ouellette’s apartment when the PVC piping used to channel the dangerous fumes out of the building became disconnected, Russell said.

The system was installed on July 24, he added, and judging from when the symptoms started showing up in the tenants the pipe likely disconnected just a couple days earlier.

Typically, readings of at least 5 parts per million (ppm) of carbon monoxide will prompt a building’s evacuation, Russell said.

When readings were taken around noon on Aug. 3, Russell said, one apartment showed readings of 500 ppm. The common spaces and hallways of the building were reading 200 ppm.

“Once we ascertained what it was, they had already shut the furnace off and ventilated (the building),” Russell said.

Russell himself went into the crawl space to look at the separated pipe, and even though the area had been ventilated, was still feeling some of the effects of the carbon monoxide, he said.

Russell added he knows Concord Gas Heating Service of Bow did not have the proper permit because anyone wishing to do any sort of improvements or work of such a nature is required to come to his office and show their license to get a permit for it.