“Make Safe Crew” Helps Clear Last Roads

“Make safe 2 to EOC. At Concord and Alden, tree has been cleared but still has power lines down and has a leaning pole.”

Fire Captain William Wargo leaned into his handheld radio as he reported back to the city’s emergency operations center.

“Pole 5814 is leaning and could come down if it’s windy enough. There is no power in the area. Houses are running generators.”

It was Friday morning, and Wargo was on duty as part of the city’s Tropical Storm Isaias ​“Make Safe” crew. Three days into the recovery efforts, Wargo was working a double shift. He was into the 16th hour, helping New Haven’s weary crews help the city recover from a mammoth blow to trees, power lines, and daily life.

“When the storm comes, it’s a lot of moving parts,” Wargo reflected as he pulled out of the Fire Training Academy in his white firefighter’s SUV for that morning’s assignment. He wore a grey New Haven fire department T‑shirt and blue face mask. The critical piece of equipment — an old Motorola radio set — was strapped to his chest. Normally, he is the officer in charge of the firehouse on Fountain Street. Friday he was a member of “‘Make Safe’ Crew 2.”

His mission: to assess various power outages, street blockages, and storm-damaged electrical poles throughout the city. To establish whether or not the scene had been made safe. And report back to a lieutenant stationed in the emergency operations center, the windowless basement room in the Hall of Records building on Orange Street that serves as the nerve center of the city’s storm response efforts.

Wargo is one of dozens of firefighters, police officers, tree-cutters, and electric utility workers who are working on the streets of New Haven to repair the damage wrecked by the storm. As of Friday 3 p.m., they had succeeded in clearing all but three remaining obstructed streets. They had 207 remaining tree-and-wire requests to attend to; 194 had already been completed.

This overcast Friday morning, Wargo was given a list of 30 streets with tree and power line-related damage to visit.

Each time he arrived on scene, he listened for the whirring of generators. If they were running, he would know that the area was still out of power, which clued him into whether the power lines were live or not.

Sometimes he knocked on doors to residents to ask if they had power. He looked out for potentially hazardous situations — such as a tree leaning into live power lines. He also checked if the street was passable.

Jason Bayer, who lives in a corner house at Concord and Alden Street in Morris Cove, saw Wargo working and approached him.

He said he was frustrated that day after day, no work was being done on restoring power to his home. Every house in the street had electricity except for Bayer’s and his neighbor’s. They had no generators.

The neighbor, who has three children, had already moved out of their home to shelter some place that had power.

“UI won’t come because they say it’s not safe ​‘cuz of the trees. The city says they won’t come ​‘cuz it’s not safe ​‘cuz of the the wires,” said Bayer (pictured).

Wargo listened, then asked Bayer he had any urgent medical needs; if he did, the city would be able prioritize restoring power to his home. Bayer said he fortunately only had ​“bad knees” and thanked Wargo for his service.

“You have to show compassion for what they’re going through, and you have to take it with a grain of salt if they’re getting mad at you,” Wargo said as he drove away from the scene. ​“The longer it takes, the more frustrated people will get. People understand we’re doing the best we can, but there is only so much we can do.”

The city’s two make-safe crews are part of a three-pronged clean-up effort comprised of themselves, United Illuminating power restoration crews, and the city’s tree clean-up teams. Together, the goal is to clear ripped-out power lines, toppled telephone poles and broken tree branches to make the city safer again.

“It’s not safe for UI to work on wires if a tree is hanging on them,” Wargo said. ​“And the city is not going to touch trees if they are on a wire.”

So Wargo mediates the sometimes logistically-complicated relationship between the two.

UI electric utility workers are in charge of turning off the power in fallen wires, restoring electricity and replacing the pole. Meanwhile, the tree clean-up crews chop up trunks and branches into smaller pieces to clear them.

“That’s another reason they have us driving around, to verify what’s safe, what is not safe, and what might be missed,” said Wargo.

Wargo pulled up to Woodward Avenue. On a section of the road close to the Coast Guard station, a heavy telephone pole hung by only its wires. The thick column of wood made a 30-degree angle with the asphalt. It posed a serious enough safety risk that Wargo decided to stay at least two pole lengths away from it.

“If it snaps,” he explained, ​“the wire will jump back one pole length.”

He was aware of the incendiary risk posed by these live wires. After all, as a firefighter, he had seen the damage that loose, high-voltage electrical wires can do.

When he was working as a volunteer firefighter in Fairfield more than 13 years ago, Wargo witnessed an explosion. A fallen, energized power line had set the pavement on fire. ​“It was so bright everything went black.” he said. The asphalt had caught fire and was bubbling, pure liquid.

At high enough temperatures, the road could turn into glass, said Wargo. He had to tell residents in the street that the firefighters could not put water on the fire until the electrical current was turned off.

On Friday morning, wary of the safety hazard at Woodward Avenue, Wargo radioed into the emergency operations center. ​“Make safe 2 to EOC,” he said. ​“The tree is cleared but you still have multiple power lines and a power pole down with power out to the area.”

A man in a car who lived in the corner house pulled up beside Wargo, asking him about the situation. ​“I wouldn’t stay here if I were you,” Wargo told the man. But he said he would not prevent a person from returning to his home. So Wargo moved the orange traffic cones that cordoned off the street to let the resident through into his driveway.

“If there’s a wire, you assume it’s a live wire,” said Wargo.

On Russell Street, a large tree branch had fallen and was suspended over the two-lane road, entirely supported by a belt of still-attached power lines. A Fedex truck passed underneath, the roof grazing the canopy.

“The only thing that is keeping the branch from coming down is the wires. My concern is somebody going underneath it,” said Wargo. He immediately radioed into the emergency operations center and asked them to close off the road. ​“If I had caution tape with me, I would have done it.” But the only thing in Wargo’s trunk was a big crate of water bottles.

As Wargo checked on a Lincoln Avenue home that had a tree resting atop the house service wires, a truck drove by. In it was Christopher Brigham (pictured), a fellow firefighter based at the Central Fire station.

The day before, Brigham had been part of a team that carried five disabled residents down the stairs and out of a multi-story apartment building on Warren Street. The storm had rendered the electric elevator useless; the residents had been stuck inside for two days before the firefighters came to evacuate them.

“We’re the people who, when you have your worst day, you call to make it better,” said Wargo, who is a father of five daughters and lives in North Haven. ​“It’s rewarding, but it takes a mental and physical toll.”

During one shift in the past three days, a man whose house had lost power asked Wargo to assist him with starting his generator because his wife was dependent on an oxygen-breathing machine. She was relying on portable tanks for now. They tried, unsuccessfully, to help him.

“It’s tiring when you’re working 14 hour nights, running constantly. Last night we did nine runs,” he said. ​“We are going out every hour on the hour.”

“We put ourselves in harm’s way in the safest way possible,” said Wargo. He said he enjoys helping people and meeting residents of every possible background, class, race and religion. After his shift ends on Friday, he will go home and get some rest — then do it all over again.