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.

Fire Commission

After Brooks Road Fire, Officials Urge New Canaan Homeowners To Safely Clear Out Ash Pits 

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Officials are urging New Canaan homeowners to ensure the ash pits below their fireplaces are emptied regularly and safely—as well as installed properly—following a house fire last week on Brooks Road that was ignited due to improper design. Fire officials responded on the afternoon of March 2 to a two-alarm fire at a Brooks Road home. It had been ignited in a crawl space below a hearth extension for the fireplace in the living room, according to Fire Marshal Paul Payne. “What had happened, the fireplace had an ash dump in the fire box and the ashes dumped down below the chimney into the foundation area, which was exterior to the house,” Payne told members of the Fire Commission during their regular meeting Tuesday night. “Well, the smoke and the fire was in the crawl space and when I got in there with the guys, they were just finishing up,” he said during the meeting, held via videoconference.

News

Fire Marshal Report: Updates on Canaan Parish, Country Club

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Though the town has issued a permit for interior alterations for a new restaurant in the former Thali space at 87 Main St., officials say, the work still appears to be on hold. Plans for a new Japanese restaurant, Saiko, had come into the town just prior to the onset of COVID-19 virus. Demolition on the interior space had started but stalled, officials reported during the most recent meeting of the Fire Commission. The town also has issued a temporary Certificate of Occupancy for the Merrill Lynch offices at 2 Pine St., Fire Marshal Paul Payne reported at the Commission’s regular meeting, held Jan. 12 via videoconference.