Firefighters Rescue 3 From 2nd Story

Firefighters rescued tenants trapped upstairs in a fire at 453 Newhall St. that left four people temporarily homeless.

At 11:31 a.m., a 911 caller reported a fire at the southern Hamden house just off the corner of Newhall and Marlboro streets. By 11:50, when the Independent arrived, six firetrucks were on site, and firefighters had already helped the three people who were trapped on the second floor out the window and down a ladder.

There were four people in the house when the fire broke out, said Hamden Fire Chief Gary Merwede.

One person was in the basement. He ran upstairs through the smoke and escaped outside. He was transported by ambulance to Yale-New Haven Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.

Three other people were on the second floor. The smoke was too heavy for them to escape, according to Battalion Chief Gary Couture.

When Engine 2 arrived on scene, firefighters saw a woman and a special-needs male stranded on a small roof porch out front. The firefighters pulled an extension ladder off the truck and up to the pair, then guided them down to safety.

Another man was leaning out a second-story window in the back of the house. Firefighter Casey Blake, who had assisted with the first rescue, grabbed a roof ladder and placed it outside the window where he was. The man climbed down to safety on his own, according to Couture.

The three sustained only minor injuries. They took shelter in the Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church next door to get out of the cold.

No firefighters were injured.

When the first truck arrived, the firefighters began putting out the fire with the 750 gallons stored in the truck’s tank. When the next one came, that team attached a thick yellow hose to the nearest fire hydrant, which fed the first truck, which in turn fed the smaller hoses that the firefighters use to spray directly on the fire.

Merwede said he believes the fire began in the basement. He team had not yet determined the cause.

As smoke continued to pour out the back door, firefighters filed back and forth from the house to the lawn to the trucks, attaching oxygen tanks and carrying equipment in and out. A few worked on the roof. The fire was declared under control at 12:12 p.m.

Once the crews had put out the fire, a team continued to work through the house to make sure nothing was left burning. Fire, according to Merwede, travels differently in walls, so firefighters had to make sure there were no smoldering pockets that had been overlooked. At the same time, a fire marshal was in the basement determining the cause of the fire, which Merwede said would likely be made public something this week.

As firefighters continued to search the house, removing all windows and screens as they did so, firefighter Steve Postemsky walked a block over to Morse Street to detach a large yellow hose from a fire hydrant. First, he screwed the top valve cover back on with a long metal wrench. Next, he bent down to the valve that did not have the hose attached, said to stand clear, and opened it. A white jet of water shot out into the street and flowed down the shallow ditch at the side of the road, carrying with it a paper cup and other bits of debris that littered the pavement.

Once the pressure in the hose had dissipated, Postemsky detached it from the other valve on the hydrant and left it lying on the street as the unused water poured out of its metal mouth. Next, firefighters detached the hose segments from each other and ran each one over a metal bar to push out the remaining water until they could be carried back to the truck and placed back where they had come from in neat yellow folds in the rear.

Meanwhile, firefighters combed through the house and threw its burnt contents out the windows into a pile in the yard. Wooden beams, blankets, jackets, pieces of foam, boxes, and bins lay, slightly charred, in the shriveled grass. One firefighter crouched next to a basement window and grabbed the objects his co-worker handed up to him.

The fire had heavily damaged the basement, and the smoke and the heat damaged the first and second floors, the fire department reported.

The electric company showed up too, and shut off power to the house, while the Regional Water Authority stuck a long metal rod into the ground by the sidewalk in front of the house to shut off the water.

Business Opportunities

Emergency personnel were not the only ones on the scene. By a few minutes after noon, representatives from restoration companies and public adjusters began to arrive. At least six showed up, though not all waited the almost two hours it took until they could actually speak with the homeowner.

When an event that causes damage to a house occurs, like a fire or last spring’s tornado, a statewide text goes out. Representatives of restoration companies subscribe to the text alerts, allowing them to arrive on scene to try to offer their services to the homeowner.

“Our job is to speak with the homeowner and see if they use our services,” said one restoration company representative, who preferred to remain anonymous. He said it was his choice whether or not to show up, but that it’s often wise to do so, as ​“there’s a lot of competition in the market.”

Restoration companies contract for the homeowner to fix the house, often filling in a niche in the repair process. Some do full-service restorations; others specialize. A representative from Servpro, who declined to give his name, texted his colleagues at around 2:10 p.m. to tell them to come. He told the Independent that they would arrive in about 25 to 30 minutes to begin securing the house by boarding up all the windows and emptying all the pipes so they wouldn’t freeze.

A public adjuster is responsible for representing the homeowner to insurance companies, helping the owner navigate the process and maximize the payoff from insurance claims.

The restoration company representatives and the adjusters eventually wandered into the Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church, where the family who lived in the house were keeping warm along with church members and trustees.

The church owns the house, along with a few other properties in the neighborhood, and rents it to the family for about $1,100 a month. Church Trustee Lisa Willis told the Independent that the church owns houses in the neighborhood because ​“they’ve become available, and we just want to help out the community” by charging fair rents to church members and non-members alike. Willis, who serves as treasurer for the church, said she had just come to do some work when she saw firefighters climbing in and out of the house next door.

“I was like ​‘Whoa, that’s our house. What’s going on?’ Yeah, quite a surprise.”

Willis watched as John Daniley, another trustee, spoke with the public adjusters and restoration company representatives in order to decide who he would hire to restore the house.

After a little while, a Red Cross worker arrived. She sat down with one of the tenants and began asking her questions in order to place her and her family in a shelter for the night.

While they talked, a few members of the Mount Zion Seventh-Day Adventist Church across the street stopped in to offer their support for the family.

When the Mt. Zion church members arrived, the tenant looked up to talk to them, and for a moment, a wide smile stretched across her face. But once they left and she turned back to the Red Cross worker, reality rushed back in and stripped the smile from her face.

Something as devastating as this, she said, is life changing. The family said it preferred not to be identified or to discuss the incident further on Saturday.