Town Hall smoke-Feb 13 2016
Uploaded by Michael Dinan on 2016-02-13.
Smoke billowed from the roof of Town Hall Saturday morning and lingered downtown for part of the day, as officials worked to repair the furnace problem that appears to be sending exhaust back into the public building—to the point where the structure had to be closed for nearly all of Tuesday.
A planned exercise in which officials “burned the furnace” at Town Hall led to the billowing of smoke above the public building and downtown on Saturday morning, Feb. 13, 2016. Contributed
Asked about the smoke, fire officials said that those in charge of Town Hall decided to “burn the furnace” in order to clear it out.
In other words, Fire Capt. John Raidt said, there may have been an oil deposit inside the furnace and so workers ignited it in order to clear it off.
There is a “very minimal hazard of fire,” so firefighters were standing by, Raidt said.
The entire operation was planned, he said.
“The residual effect is the that the smoke from the furnace has an acrid, diesel smell and it’s going around downtown right now,” he said.
Officials have been grappling with the problem of the smell of exhaust periodically inside Town Hall since shortly after it opened. In December, public works officials told NewCanaanite.com that the boilers at Town Hall appeared to be sending out smoke and somehow that exhaust was being re-circulated in the building.
The town re-opened Town Hall last summer following an expansion and renovation project that totaled about $18 million.