No injuries in Friday morning fire
Dec. 10—NORWALK — Fire caused an estimated $35,000 in damages at a house fire Friday morning at 26 Summit St. in Norwalk.
No injuries were reported.
The call came in at 6:18 a.m. for a working structure fire and firefighters arrived seven minutes later.
A second alarm was immediately struck for additional resources.
Firefighters first on the scene found heavy smoke showing from a two-story residential structure, according to a report from NPD Capt. Charles Hillman. Smoke was coming from the entire roof line of the structure. All residents were reported to have evacuated the structure prior to arrival of the first truck.
A 360 walk-around of the structure did not reveal any occupants outside of the structure or hanging from windows, the report stated. Firefighters established a water supply at the corner of Linwood and Summit streets. The hydrant at the end of Summit Street was not utilized due to it being a dead-end hydrant. The crew encountered heavy smoke and flames.
The crew extinguished the fire and began opening the ceiling to check for an extension. A primary search was conducted in the fire area and the results were negative. A moderate volume of smoke was still pushing from the roof line adjacent to the area of the fire room. That roof was accessed through a different apartment. The crew accessed that area and found a large dog unattended in the apartment.
The crew was able to successfully open the ceiling and reported no extension in that area. Primary searches were conducted in the two other apartments with only the dog being reported in apartment A. Positive pressure fans were used on the A and C sides of the structure to improve visibility and to evacuate residual smoke from the attic area. Utilities were controlled and Ohio Edison was notified to respond to the scene.
Command notified dispatch to call the American Red Cross as there were two adults and three children that will need temporary shelter, assistant fire chief Dan Stayer said. All five were in the apartment at the time. The other two apartments were empty.
A resident of the B apartment said she was asleep and woke up sweating and her face was warm. She noted there was a fire from a power strip that had a cell phone plugged into it. She stated that the phone was not hot when she picked it up.
She said she attempted to extinguish the fire with water and was unsuccessful.
Ohio Edison arrived on scene and restored power to apartments A and C.
Seventeen firefighters responded to the scene.
"The other two apartments Edison was able to restore power and get them back in," Strayer said. "The back apartment was unlivable."
It was a good effort by the NFD, Strayer said.
"That's one of the big benefits of having full-time personnel. We had a good turnout because it was at shift change. Of the 19 guys we have on the roster we had 17 turned out.
"I can't say enough about our guys. They are well trained and disciplined. We were able to get water on the fire in a hurry."
"The one female resident said the heat work her up. They had smoke detectors and I don't know why they didn't work. They appeared to be hard-wired and for some odd reason they didn't work.
"She was lucky she felt the heat. There was a large canine in one of the other apartments and he did survive.
"It worked out."
