Officials are urging town residents to hold off on using fire pits or doing any other outdoor burning, following a Parish Road brush fire on Wednesday afternoon—the second in two days.
Firefighters control a brush fire at 149 Parish Road South on April 20, 2016. Photo published with permission from its owner
Firefighters at about 2 p.m. responded to a report of a brush fire at 149 Parish Road South—a fire that consumed an Entire woodpile and approximately 20-by-30-foot landscaped area that had mulch, according to New Canaan Fire Chief Jack Hennessey.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the fire, he said, though extremely dry conditions have elevated the likelihood and danger of brush fires.
“We put a lot of water down and the ground was considerably drier than we thought when we left—it just absorbed all the water, kind of surprising,” Hennessey said.
New Canaan, together with the rest of Fairfield County and surrounding areas, remains under a “red flag warning” from the National Weather Service, meaning fires are expected to spread rapidly following ignition.
Firefighters had contained and extinguished a brush fire on Tuesday on the other side of town, in a wooded area off of Canoe Hill Road. There, a neighbor spotted the fire early on and alerted emergency responders.
This time, the fire started in the woodpile of a home that was occupied and the children inside noticed it, Hennessey said.
The wind was favorable in this case, blowing away from a nearby wooded area, otherwise “it would have ended up in the woods and we would be chasing it around,” the fire chief said.
Residents should avoid using fire pits or doing any sort of outdoor burning until after the rains come. They’re expected Friday night, according to the National Weather Service.