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New Canaan Fire Marshal’s ‘Halloween Safety Tips’

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Halloween is a fun and spooky time of year for kids. Make trick-or-treating safe for your children with a few easy safety tips:

When choosing a costume stay away from long, trailing fabric. If your child is wearing a mask, make sure the eye holes are large enough to see out. Provide children with flashlights to carry or use glow sticks as part of their costume. Dried flowers, corn stalks and crepe paper catch fire easily.

Around Town

New Canaan  Community Shows Up for ‘2023 NC Combine’ Benefiting Gracie Fund for Pediatric Cancer [PHOTOS]

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New Canaan’s Chris Falsetta told a stadium full of community friends and supporters Sunday morning that his then 12-year-old daughter, Gracie, was diagnosed with leukemia almost exactly one year ago, on Oct. 13, 2022. 

Since that time, many people have approached Falsetta and asked how the past year has been, he said. “And I say, ‘It’s been incredible,’ and I usually get puzzled looks,” Falsetta said from midfield at Dunning Stadium under sunny, warm skies minutes before the 2023 N.C. Combine began. “ ‘What do you mean incredible?’ Well, it’s been incredibly tough, right? You know that.

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New Canaan Fire Marshal: Cooking Fire Safety

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October 8-14, 2023 is National Fire Prevention week. This year’s focus is “Cooking Safety starts with YOU. Pay attention to fire prevention.”

Cooking related fire is one of the most common causes of home fires (not to mention automatic alarms!).  Following are a few tips on cooking safety so your meals can be as uneventful as they are delicious:
Many cooking fires occur when pots are placed on the stove to warm and then we get distracted by a phone call, a child calling or an interesting home repair show. To help avoid this set the timer for 3 – 5 minutes as a reminder to come back and check. If a pot catches fire NEVER carry the pot to the sink, outdoors, etc.

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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.

Around Town

T-Shirts for Sale: New Canaan Firefighters Raise Money for Breast Cancer Foundation

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The New Canaan Fire Department and New Canaan Fire Company No. 1 are joining forces to raise money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation ahead of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. 

The local agencies are selling T-shirts at an online store through midnight Thursday ($25 for youth tees, $28 for adults), according to volunteer firefighter Silvana Cardona. 

Cardona’s great-aunt passed away from breast cancer two years ago “so it definitely hits home for me,” she told NewCanaanite.com. “Breast cancer awareness and fundraising is something that I strive to do,” Cardona said. The Fire Department also might purchase additional shirts to sell at the Main Street firehouse throughout October, she added. 

Referring to the online store raising money for the national breast cancer organization—which itself provides resources and support to those facing the disease—Cardona said, “This is our first step in regards to doing something that’s separate from firefighting generally. It’s a great way to get community involvement and also fundraise for a great cause.”

Cardona joined the fire company in January, realizing a lifelong goal.