A fire ripped through the second floor of a multi-family home on Ansonia’s Hubbell Avenue Tuesday morning.
No injuries were reported.
The video below shows the moment firefighters were ordered out of the house after the incident commander deemed it too dangerous. The horns you’ll hear is the signal to get out.
A mother and four of her children were in the home when the fire broke out, Mayor David Cassetti said, but they made it out of the house safely before firefighters arrived.
Officials from the Red Cross were assisting the family Tuesday afternoon.
Cassetti said he called Mead School, where other children from the family are enrolled, to let the children know their mother and siblings were safe.
The mother could be seen weeping surrounded by her kids on a stoop across the street while her apartment burned. The mayor and the Rev. Richard Beattie, a pastor from Christ Episcopal Church who is a fire department chaplain, consoled her.
“They were very shaken up,” Cassetti said. “I’m just glad they got out safely, I’m thankful for that.”
The fire started about 11 a.m. at 17 Hubbell Ave.
Here is video from a cell phone carried live on the Valley Indy’s Facebook page:
Ansonia Fire Department First Assistant Chief Michael Eheman said the call initially came in as a mattress fire.
But when he and Fire Marshal Darrick Lundeen arrived the flames had spread to the rest of a bedroom inside the home, then the attic and through the roof.
“We had heavy smoke blowing out of the (north) side of the building,” Eheman said. “Very quickly it escalated.”
About 50 firefighters from Ansonia, Seymour, and Derby responded.
Eheman said firefighters had a difficult time fighting the flames because of the layout of the house.
“Off of the first front window there was an interior wall,” he said. “As we progressed, once they got into the second floor, there was another wall that must have been an exterior porch at one point they had closed in.”
Story continues after the photos.
“There was a void in there where it had gotten in, that’s why we lost so much of the roof,” Eheman said. “We could not get to it from either end.”
The area features several multi-family homes built close together.
Eheman credited firefighters with being able to negotiate fire trucks through densely parked vehicles in the neighborhood.
Most of the flames were knocked down by about 11:45 a.m.
Story continues after the photos.
The blaze was declared under control at 12:14 p.m.
Eheman thanked firefighters from surrounding towns for responding to the blaze.
“It’s day-time, which is another hassle for us. We’re all-volunteer,” Eheman said. “Thank goodness we were able to call mutual aid companies from Seymour and Derby.”
The fire gutted the second floor of the home. Eheman said the first floor of the house was “relatively OK,” albeit with heavy water and smoke damage.
There was a major fire in the same neighborhood in March.
The fire marshal will investigate and make an official determination as to how the fire began, Eheman said.
Mayor Cassetti said he got an alert about the fire and drove to the scene a few minutes later.
The mayor thanked volunteer firefighters for responding quickly.
