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.

News

Fire Officials Pursue ‘Dry Hydrant’ Installation in Northwestern New Canaan

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Town officials say they’re working on a plan to install a pipe system that will allow firefighters to more readily withdraw water from a pond located near the intersection of Dan’s Highway and West Road. Fire Marshal Paul Payne said during the Fire Commission’s Jan. 12 meeting that he and Chief Jack Hennessey are working with a contractor regarding the possible installation of a dry hydrant in Lockwood Pond. Commission Chair Jack Horner asked during the meeting whether that was the pond that New Canaan firefighters drafted from in fighting a structure fire in November 2019. 

Payne said yes. “I had heard we had an easement on one of the properties up there and so I researched the deeds and indeed we do have an easement for a dry hydrant on one of the properties up there,” Payne said during the meeting, held via videoconference.

COVID-19 New Canaan

Fire Department on Track for $30,000 Deficit Due to COVID-Related Expenses 

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Fire officials say that they’re now expecting to run about $30,000 over budget for this fiscal year due to COVID-19-related costs. The department’s overtime lines “were reduced in the last budget process and we have had a lot of people have to take time off with the COVID crisis,” according to Fire Chief Jack Hennessey. “People have been out of work for weeks because they have sick family members and they have been asked to isolate,” Hennessey said during the April 14 meeting of the Fire Commission, held via videoconference. “So that has been a very big stress on the overtime budget. Preliminarily right now, I am going to guess that we are going to run a $30,000 deficit at the end of the year and it’s all pretty much because of the overtime expense of having to cover people who are not able to work because of family exposures and family sicknesses.”

As of late Friday, 139 New Canaan people had tested positive for coronavirus disease and 18 had succumbed to the virus, according to the Office of Emergency Management.

Beth Jones

Firefighters Start New Mask-Wearing Policy After Two Town Workers Test Positive for COVID-19

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The New Canaan Fire Department launched a new policy with respect to wearing masks after two municipal employees—neither of them firefighters—tested positive for COVID-19, officials said Tuesday. All personnel in the fire house will wear a surgical mask when there are two or more people in the same room, and if firefighters are unable to social-distance in the trucks, they will wear masks there, too, according to Fire Chief Jack Hennessey. “Community spread is out there, so we assume everybody we run into could be potentially infected, so we are protecting each other and ourselves from everybody,” Hennessey said during the Fire Commission’s regular meeting, held via videoconference. 

He added, “We are trying to get better testing for our personnel but that is not available yet because they are still only testing symptomatic people and there is no antibody test available to the general public yet. So we are kind of in a holding pattern. No firefighters that I am aware of have tested positive or have COVID, but we do have a number of family members that are sick so we do have three or four people that have been missing work because of sickness in their families and we want to make sure that it does not come into the firehouse.”

Town Hall has been closed to the public since March 23.