Westville Fire Displaces 3 Households

When Kathleen Federico smelled smoke inside her house Wednesday night, she grabbed Maya, her pet Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and headed outside.

She and her husband Paul knocked on their neighbors’ doors along the way. Everyone got out safely. Then the Federicos called the fire department.

They didn’t have time to rescue Bean, their tabby cat.

The fire department got the call at 9:20 p.m. and arrived promptly at the three-family house at 37 Fairfield St., partway up a hilly block from Pardee Place to West Prospect.

Thirty-seven firefighters put out the two-alarm blaze in about 20 minutes. And they rescued Tabby along with another cat stranded in the house.

It was one of four overnight fires. Someone intentionally set fire around 2:40 a.m. to the exteriors of adjacent 395, 297 and 401 Crown St., according to Doyle. He called the damage minor, contained to the outside. Members of Yale fraternities occupy two of the buildings, which Pike International owns. Doyle said he expects the tenants, who had to leave the premises, to be allowed to return later Thursday once the on-site investigation is completed. Another one-alarm fire was reported around 1:47 a.m. at a building housing University of New Haven students in Osborn Avenue in the Beaver Hills neighborhood. In both cases firefighters quickly put out the fires, Doyle said. Another minor fire took place early Thursday morning on Pendleton Street int he Edgewood neighborhood.

The Fairfield Street fire in Westville started on a rear porch, raced up a staircase and did severe damage to the attic and roof, said Assistant Fire Chief Matt Marcarelli (pictured at the scene with Alder Richard Furlow) . No one was injured in the blaze. Fire Marshal Bobby Doyle said Thursday morning that the cause was a burning cigarette accidentally ignored.

The fire left the house uninhabitable. Maracrelli said the Red Cross was headed to the scene to arrange for places for people to stay.

The tenants of the three apartments sat on neighbors’ stoops across the street, as rivulets of water coursed down blocked-off Fairfield Street and a crowd lingered into the night to watch the mop up operation.

“We couldn’t get back in” to save Bean, Kathleen Federico (pictured), grateful for the firefighters’ rescue, said as she waited to learn about where she and Paul would stay for the night. Federico, a financial services specialists at the APT Foundation, called the Fairfield Street area a ​“great neighborhood.”

Another tenant, who declined to be named, told Marcarelli he might try to find friends to stay with rather than get sent to a certain Westville motel.

“They’re trying to put me in the Econo Lodge,” he complained.

“I understand,” Marcarelli said. ​“We can’t put you up in the Omni.”

“But I’m not staying in no crack den!” the tenant responded.

With the blaze safely out, a firefighter ushered the tenant inside to retrieve belongings in the meantime.

A third tenant, Jenifer Prunier, huddled in a blanket and waited with her cat Cinder. She planned to accept the offer of a hotel room.

“I had just got home” from her job as a corporate office manager, Prunier said, when black smoke suddenly filled the house. She managed to grab Cinder on the way out.

“She clawed my neck a little bit,” she said, proudly displaying the scars, ​“but I got her out.”