NHFD Battles Harbor Oil Blaze, West River House Fire

Firefighters finally cleared the scene of a dramatic oil fire on the harbor shortly before 11 a.m. Sunday — just in time to head over to a smaller fire across town.

The fire on the harbor started shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday. It hit a transformer at an electrical-conversion plant on United Illuminated Co.-owned property on Connecticut Avenue in the Annex.

The facility there, leased by Cross-Sound Cable company, converts power from AC to DC and sends it to Long Island through a trunk-line cable.

The sky filled with black smoke for hours after the fire broke out. The fire calmed down after about 90 minutes, but continued smoldering through Sunday morning. The fire department gave the all-clear for people to enter the property around 10:30 a.m.

Because it was an electrical fire, the department didn’t try to put it out. Rather, firefighters set up a perimeter to keep it from spreading. They succeeded. No one was injured; no surrounding property was damaged.

“They have 16,000 gallons of mineral-based oil that’s used to cool the transformer,” said Acting Deputy Chief Brian Jooss. ​“Whatever caused the fire, which is under investigation, caused the oil to burn, which caused the major fire condition.”

Around 11 a.m. Sunday, a call came in for a one-alarm fire on the third story of a house at 51 Mead St. in the West River neighborhood.Firefighters from Engines 4, 9 and 15, Squad 2, and Truck 4 arrived to find the building’s occupants already outside and safe. The firefighters had the fire out by noon, according to Battalion Chief Gary Carbone.

“There was a lot of fire blowing out,” Carbone said. ​“It was a very good knockdown.”

UI shut off the utilities, and the Red Cross set out to find other places for the house’s two families — a total of six adults and three children — to sleep Sunday night, Carbone said. Meanwhile, the fire department’s arson squad was on site beginning an investigation into the fire’s cause.

One firefighter went to the hospital to be treated for an injured wrist.