Fire Commission

‘It’s Just Been Chronic’: Park Street Condos Hire Environmental Consultant

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A condominium association on Park Street has hired environmental consultants to help figure out what’s causing an odor and fumes rising from catch basins and drains outside the complex, officials say. 

Emergency responders first visited the Park Mead Condominiums in mid-October following a report of an odor in the building, according to Fire Marshal Paul Payne. “After some searching I noticed a fairly strong odor of what I thought to be a solvent of some sort coming from this catch basin,” Payne told NewCanaanite.com in response to a request for information. “Noting the white staining on the grates, it seemed a painter cleaned his painting equipment and dumped it in the catch basin. After several weeks of the odor continuing, even after heavy rain events, the association hired an environmental consultant to try to get to the bottom of this. They are currently in the investigation stage.”

The 1956-built Park Mead development includes 46 units.

Albe Bassett

NCHS Sophomore Earns Fire Department’s ‘Community Hero Award’

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Marlena Ericsson, 15, was walking home from Youth Group at the Congregational Church of New Canaan on a Tuesday afternoon in late October when she spotted an elderly woman on Heritage Hill Road. It had started to rain and “you could tell she wasn’t able to walk,” Ericsson, a New Canaan High School sophomore, recalled during a Fire Commission meeting held Tuesday night at the firehouse. 

“She reminded me of my grandma, who is 101,” Ericsson told NewCanaanite.com. “So I kind of wanted to help more than anything else.”

She did. The teen brought the woman into the nearby firehouse and waited for the Police Department to come and bring her back home safely, according to Fire Chief Albe Bassett. “Marlena was able to bring her to the firehouse and get her help,” Bassett said while presenting Ericsson with the department’s Community Hero Award.

News

New Canaan Fire Department Pursues ‘Automatic Mutual Aid’ with Neighboring Towns

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New Canaan fire officials are drafting agreements with bordering municipalities in order to ensure that trained firefighters are getting to more potentially serious scenes even faster. As it is, the New Canaan Fire Department has automatic mutual aid with agencies in towns such as Wilton and Vista, N.Y. when it comes to structure fires. Yet in responding to other calls—such as residential fire alarms or reports of a possible carbon monoxide illness, the town’s response time to far-reaching corners of the town often exceeds the National Fire Prevention Association’s requirements, according to New Canaan Fire Chief Albe Bassett. 

“The travel distances are too far,” Bassett told members of the Fire Commission during their regular meeting, held Tuesday night at the firehouse on Main Street. With an automatic mutual aid agreement in place, trained firefighters from neighboring departments such as Stamford and Pound Ridge, N.Y. could get eyes on scene several minutes faster—an often critical window. Bassett said he studied NCFD’s response times and identified four “quadrants” of the town where help is needed, and that he’s “actively looking to get agreements with Pound Ridge, Vista, and Stamford to provide an automatic mutual aid engine for any emergency response.”

He provided the example of West Cross Road in New Canaan, which is located below the Merritt Parkway at the town’s southwestern border with Stamford.

News

Officials: Kitchen Fire at East Avenue Business Caused $70,000 in Damage

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A Dec. 23 kitchen fire at an East Avenue business caused about $70,000 in damage, officials said this week. The fire at Fjord Fish Market was caused by a gas explosion, according to Fire Marshal Paul Payne. “It certainly was not intentional,” Payne said during his monthly update to members of the Fire Commission at their regular meeting, held at the firehouse on Main Street. “One of the workers there turned the wrong valve, they lit the pilot for the fryer, turned the wrong valve, let gas into the room, went to light the fryer, there was an explosion, it caught fire.”

The fire safety system kicked in properly and put out the fire, he said.

Albert Bassett

New Canaan Boy, 6, Receives ‘Bravery Award’ from Fire Department

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About two months ago, 5-year-old New Canaan resident John Tashjian was sitting in a car seat while his father, Luke, drove them up Route 20 in Sturbridge, Mass. 

Suddenly, a motorist swerved into the oncoming traffic lane in the 50 mph zone and hit the Tashjians head-on. While his dad suffered a broken vertebrae, young John suffered a broken collarbone and his car seat harness, while it did its job, tore the skin off his shoulders. The pair “rolled backwards across two lanes of oncoming traffic without being t-boned on John and my side of the car,” Fire Commission Chair Jack Horner said, reading from a firsthand account from Luke Tashjian at Tuesday night’s regular meeting of the appointed body. “Our car rolled about 250 feet since it was slightly downhill to where it hit a parked car at the local towing company where they impound your car after an accident and stopped,” he continued at the meeting, held in Fire Department headquarters and attended by the Tashjian family. 

Incredibly, though his dad found himself unable to move, the little boy became “very calm and authoritative and told me to call 911,” Luke Tashjian said in the firsthand account. 

It continued:
“I was lying in a puddle and told him I didn’t have my cell phone. He told me to find my cell phone and call 911.