New Haven Independent

It happened Sunday afternoon a little after 4 at the second-floor apartment their family moved into just three and a half weeks ago, at 25 Norton St.

The house is owned by Ottowa Enterprises, a Milford company controlled by Anthony Perrotti, a major landlord of rental properties in transient city neighborhoods. Perrotti’s empire of over 50 New Haven properties and 240 apartments in southern Connecticut is in decline, partly due to a rash of foreclosures. (Click here and here to read about that.)

Dash (pictured) walked out of the bedroom, where he was watching the rerun, into the living room, where his wife and three children were watching the TLC channel.

“We smelled smoke. I was looking around,” Dash, a UPS driver, said as he stood on the sidewalk late Sunday afternoon. Kevin, 8, “said smoke was coming out the window.”

Indeed, there were flames right outside the window, at the side of the house. Dash tried putting them out with cups of water from the bathroom. Didn’t work.

Meanwhile, his wife called the fire department, which responded with three engines and a truck. Firefighters put out the flames before they could spread. Tenants from both occupied floors made it outside without injury. No one was hurt.

West Battalion Chief Jim Stacey said at the scene that it appeared that faulty wiring shorted out and caused the fire. He was waiting for the arson squad to arrive to check out the scene before sending the tenants back inside. He expected them to be able to reenter shortly.

Renee Sargeant (pictured) hoped so. She was rattled as she watched the scene from a parking lot across the street. Sargeant, a clinical tech at St. Raphael’s, has lived with her family on the first floor for four and a half years.

However, it turned out that Sargeant’s family had to spend the night with relatives. According to Mark Mazzarese, a Perrotti employee who came on the scene Sunday, the flames caused firefighters to knock out a two-by-four piece of the wall in the first-floor apartment. Siding on the outside of the first floor was torn, too. The fire started on the first floor.

Mazzarese said Monday morning that he hopes his company can make those repairs and check the circuits in time for the Sargeant family to move back in by the end of the day.

Mazaarese spent hours with the fire investigator Sunday evening, he said, and at this point the cause of the fire “hasn’t been determined yet.” He said the building was “absolutely” up to code.