Fire destroys large part of Paul Newman camp
A fire on Friday evening destroyed a large section of Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for seriously ill children in Connecticut.
Jimmy Canton, the chief executive of the camp in Ashford, said it appears no one was injured in the blaze, which was reported to fire officials through an automatic fire alarm just before 5 p.m. He said buildings housing the camp’s store and arts and crafts, woodshop and cooking programs were destroyed.
“Although the cause of the fire is unknown at this time, what is known is that The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp is a community devoted to hope and healing,” Canton said in a statement. “We will get through this in the way that we always have and always will — as a family.”
Tom Borgman, the deputy chief of the Ashford Volunteer Fire Department,
said the fire destroyed two buildings, including a large structure that was made to look like the center of an old western town. Different sections of the wood-frame building were constructed to look like separate buildings, housing different programs, he said.
He said at least six other local departments assisted in putting out the fire.
The camp, with extensive medical facilities on site, was founded by Newman in 1988 in the woods of eastern Connecticut, with a Western motif inspired by the late actor’s movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
It provides summer camping experiences adapted for children with serious physical and medical limitations, although its traditional summer camp was canceled in
2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The charity also runs outreach programs for children in more than 40 hospitals, clinics and other settings in the Northeast, serving more than 20,000 children each year.