With the proliferation of restaurants in New Canaan over the past 10 or 15 has come a safety hazard that town officials have flagged and are seeking to address.
More than 90 percent of the approximately 75 100-gallon propane tanks downtown serve New Canaan’s restaurants—a dense collection that gives rise to an “exposure hazard,” according to Fire Marshal Fred Baker.
“Meaning, if a building catches fire and there’s a tank next door, it’s a dangerous explosion hazard,” Baker said.
“They’re all installed with required clearances and distances, but they’re still there and in some cases, in pretty tight quarters.”
Baker and other fire and town officials had hoped in recent years to see a plan materialize for natural gas coming to New Canaan. Those new lines had been expected to preclude the need for propane tanks. However, town officials say, discussions with the utility Eversource around prospective staging areas—as well as just what asphalt restoration work would be required to get town roads back in shape following installation—appear to have slowed down those talks.
In nearly all cases, the propane tanks that feed restaurant kitchens in New Canaan are not conspicuous to downtown visitors, stowed either out back of the buildings and in alleys, or in some cases of 1,000-gallon tanks—such as beside New Canaan Diner—buried underground.
According to Baker, the density of propane tanks downtown has reached a point where it potentially can limit the use of a commercial site.
For example, he said, two prospective restaurant owners recently approached him about locations for new eateries and he had to turn them down.
“If there is no place to put new tanks then you are kind of out of luck, and both places they had chosen were in locations where you could not add any more tanks,” Baker said.