New Canaan firefighters returning to the Main Street fire house from life- and property-saving calls say they face another, immediate danger in trying to back trucks back into their bays: distracted, hurried and aggressive drivers.
What happens is this, firefighters say: In returning to the station from either direction, trucks in order to back into the garage must nose out across Main Street, blocking both lanes of traffic. Those driving the fire trucks pull in front of the firehouse lengthwise first, allowing passenger firefighters to hop out with a stop-sign paddle and halt motorists so that the trucks can safely nose toward Vine Cottage and then back in.
But drivers often do not wait for that process to unfold, Fire Chief Jack Hennessey said.
New Canaan Fire Chief Jack Hennessey at the Fire House on Aug. 20, 2014. Credit: Michael Dinan
“Either way they come up here, guys dismount the truck and try to stop traffic and as they are doing that, people will try to drive around the truck,” Hennessey said, adding that he’s seen his men nearly clipped and heard reports about it happening.
Firefighter Damien Sheerin said that on his very first day he got off a truck and nearly got hit by a woman rushing past.
“We pulled in front of the building with the lights on, and instead of waiting, she just zoomed past,” Sheerin recalled.
Asked about the situation, firefighter Paul Devan urged motorists to focus: “Hang up the phone and pay attention to the rigs.”
Hennessey raised the problem at this week’s meeting of the Traffic Calming Work Group, a panel that includes police, public works and emergency management officials. There, DPW Assistant Director Tiger Mann said one way to ensure that the dismounting firefighters are protected is for the trucks to ensure they’re traveling northbound on returning to the station, and to start by swinging the front of the fire engine to the left, across the southbound traffic lane. That way, the firefighters are getting off at a time when the roadway is already blocked.
Hennessey said the only drawback to that is that distracted motorists will crash into the truck.
“It’s a lose-lose,” the fire chief said. “We’re not really overly upset if somebody crashed into the truck, in the sense that we’d rather have that than they crash into one of our guys. It all depends on the drivers. Depends on how much of a hurry they’re in.”
Firefighter Dave Dipanni said part of the problem is that the intersection itself is complicated. For example, he said, the firefighters halting traffic may have stopped one lane that’s got a red light, but then a lane of traffic from a different direction may get a green light and, not understanding that the entire lane of traffic ahead of them has been stopped purposely, try to drive around it.
“I always tell the guys to face the traffic and now when I’m operating the fire truck, I try to park on an angle so guys getting out of the fire truck are not exposed to the oncoming traffic, they’re actually protected by the truck,” Dipanni said.