POLICE/FIRE REPORTS
HOUSE FIRE PUT OUT IN NEW LONDON
New London — Firefighters extinguished a bedroom fire in a multi-family home at 56 Lincoln Ave. Monday afternoon that fire officials said houses a second-floor day care operation. No injuries were reported. The fire was reported at 4:09 p.m. School crossing guard Diane Fisher said she saw smoke coming from the first-floor window of the building facing Connecticut Avenue.
“The next thing you know I saw flames and I said ‘Oh my God it’s on fire,”’ Fisher said. She called 911. Firefighters arrived to find everyone in the home had safely evacuated. A search turned up no further occupants, New London Fire Battalion Chief Mark Waters said.
Waters said an aggressive interior attack by firefighters helped confine the fire to one first-floor room. There is smoke and water damage throughout the home, however. At least three people were displaced.
The fire marshal’s office is investigating the cause of the fire.
City property records list the home as a two-family, built in 1890, and owned by Robert M. Catalino.
BOMB SQUAD CALLED TO WATERFORD; DEVICE ‘NON-FUNCTIONING’
Waterford — A state police bomb squad was called here Monday to investigate what was reported to be an explosive device in a parked vehicle.
Members of the state police Emergency Services Unit Bomb Squad eventually determined the device to be “non-functioning and inert,” Waterford police said in a statement.
On Monday night police said the device was a “commercially available product” and not homemade but declined to discuss specifics of the device.
The incident was reported at 12:55 p.m. but Waterford police did not reveal the location of the incident or what type of explosive device was discovered. Police had earlier in the day reported on its Facebook page that Lloyd Road was closed down “due to police activity,” and had anticipated the road being closed for several hours as they dealt with an “item.”
Police, in the statement, said the device was unknowingly transported from an out-of-state location to a residence in Waterford and said “there was no immediate threat to the community and any risk was isolated to the immediate area of the device.”
The device was seized and a search found no additional dangerous or explosive items, police said in the statement.