Blaze ravages North End apartments

Official: Crews had tough time battling grill fire

MIDDLETOWN — A stubborn blaze in a 14-unit apartment building in the North End over the weekend, which displaced all its residents, was touched off by someone grilling on the back porch, officials said.

Fortunately, the Middletown fire station, which got a call at 10:45 p.m. Sunday, is around the corner — just four blocks away.

Although people were home at the time, there were no injuries, Fire Chief Robert Kronenberger said.

“When we got there, there was a huge body of fire on the back porches, and it went from the second floor and extended to the third floor and into the roof,” said the chief, whose crews fought the blaze for about 40 minutes, before it began getting away from them.

Fighting it was labor intensive, Kronenberger added, because the structure had multiple roofs.

The 6,144-square-foot structure, built in 1957, is owned by Rapallo Avenue LLC of Easton, according to the tax assessor’s office.

“Over the years, what they did, probably, was they took a flat roof and they made a small pitch to it, and then ended up putting a rubber membrane roof on it. Once the fire got into the roof area, it pretty much had free run to get to where it wanted. It took a lot of overhaul to get to it.”

Green Street resident Nur Fitzpatrick said she was sitting on her couch at 10:30 p.m. and heard people screaming “Get out! Get out!”

At first, she thought it was a fight.

“People were running out of the house. A woman had a baby, 1 year old. She just gave me the child, and he was crying.”

Firefighters engaged in a coordinated attack from above and below, Kronenberger said.

“The ladder company was on the roof cutting it open and exposing it, while, at the same time, the guys underneath were cutting and trying to expose it. It wasn’t as simple as pulling a ceiling and there’s the attic for us,” he said.

Once in a while, the chief said, homeowners re-roof old buildings at an angle to encourage water runoff.

“What (such roofs) don’t do is, they don’t give us access to it, so it creates a big void space. Once the fire got into the void space, it ran,” he said.

Firefighters battled the blaze until at least 3:30 a.m., witnesses said.

After Fitzpatrick and others made sure all the residents and pets were safe, she ran home to get blankets for the victims.

“I stayed up until 4 a.m. because I couldn’t go to sleep until it was put out,” she said. “When I opened my door, my whole apartment filled with smoke.

“The fire was like it was the house next to mine, because that’s how bad it was burning. My eyes started burning. It was just insane,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that a good number of those living on both streets were equally unnerved.

Smoke detectors throughout the apartment building allowed everyone to flee in time, the chief said.

“The alarm system did its job. Everybody got out. The alarm system worked so well, we had to go back the next day and turn it off” when the battery backups kicked in, he said.

“It was interesting to watch it, because as we hit it, it would poke its head out — we’d knock it back and it would come back out. It was a pesky fire,” Kronenberger added.

Firefighters had five hoses trained on the building, Fitzpatrick said. “It’s charcoal,” she said of the home’s blackened facade as she looked out the window Monday afternoon.

It appeared like the blaze was confined to the top line of the structure, yet took hours to contain, Fitzpatrick added.

“How is this roof still on fire?” she recalled thinking.

Westfield and South Fire districts provided mutual aid. Soon after, trucks from Portland and Cromwell joined in.

There was another house fire across town on Memorial Day at 465 Highland Ave., around 1:45 p.m. A cooking fire got out of control in the kitchen area of one unit in a multifamily structure, said South Fire Chief Michael Howley.

The kitchen cabinets and stove were destroyed in the blaze and the home also sustained smoke damage, he said.

Westfield and Middletown fire departments assisted his units. One person was displaced and is being helped by the American Red Cross, the chief said, and the apartment was condemned.

Cassandra Day / Hearst Connecticut Media A seven-unit apartment house at 31 Rapallo Ave. in Middletown was the scene Saturday of a two-alarm fire that ripped through the building, exacerbated by a roof on the building that had several others under it , according to Fire Chief Robert...

The blaze originated on a second-floor porch at the back, where an individual was grilling. There were no injuries in the fire, which began just before 10:45 p.m., the fire chief said.