Firefighters find home away from home

JOHN BURGESON jburgeson@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 01/09/2008 11:13:43 PM EST

BRIDGEPORT — Equipped with all the comforts of home, a 60-foot trailer was put in service Wednesday as temporary quarters for four firefighters assigned to Engine 7 of the Ocean Terrace Fire Station.

The three-bedroom trailer, equipped with a full bathroom, kitchen and living room, will take the place of the fire station while emergency repairs are made to its cracked floor and broken pipes caused by years of settling.

Fire Chief Brian Rooney was on hand to officially open the mobile quarters. The trailer is being rented for $1,600 per month from the Pope Housing Co. of Kingston, N.H., which usually leases its trailers to those made homeless by fire.

"About 85 percent of our business is house fires," said Christina Strickland, Pope's operations coordinator. She added that it's not all that unusual for fire departments to rent the firm's mobile housing units, too.

"Right now, we have two rented to fire departments — Newton and Shrewsbury." (Both are in Massachusetts.)

The Ocean Terrace station is the base for Engine 7 and Ladder 11, giving it the nickname, "7-11." For now, Rooney said, only Engine 7 will be housed at Ocean Terrace, in part, because there is only room at the station — where most of the concrete floor is now ripped up — for a single fire engine, which must be kept out of the elements.

Looming a few hundred feet away on Fairfield Avenue are the remains of the three homes destroyed in an early-morning fire Dec. 7 that killed an infant and his parents — fatalities that some believe could have been avoided had the Ocean Terrace station been operational.

The station had been closed for the emergency repairs a few days prior to the blaze, with its personnel and equipment relocated to the Wood Avenue Fire Station, about a mile to the east. That increased travel time to the scene of the Fairfield Avenue fire by three to five minutes.

"This will give us four-minute response times throughout the city," Rooney said. A four-minute response is officials' goal for most fires in the city. It took about seven minutes for fire crews to arrive at the scene of the fatal fire, according to officials.

"Originally, we thought the repairs to this station would take two weeks, but as we got into it, and realized the magnitude of the problem, we began to look around for temporary housing," Rooney said.

He added the fire station is "very important" to the safety of the city, and that it's "strategically located" for its firefighters to quickly respond to fires in the Black Rock and West End neighborhoods, including the P.T. Barnum public housing complex across the street. While acknowledging that not having an engine at Ocean Terrace resulted in a response time three to five minutes longer than the four-minute goal, the chief also maintained that the tragic outcome on Dec. 7 probably would not have been different.

"Sometimes, the fire gets away from you — you could have a fire across the street from a firehouse and, with a fast-acting fire, have the same thing happen," he said.

Rooney said the station repairs are being made with bonding of up to $2 million authorized by the City Council this week. He wasn't sure whether all of that money would be needed for the floor repairs. He said that the roof might need repairs, too.

The Ocean Terrace station was opened in 1970.

The 12-foot-wide trailer is equipped with features such as a dishwasher, refrigerator, electric range, washing machine, a dryer, a hot-water heater, electric heat and several windows.

It's also linked by computer and communications radio to Fire Department headquarters downtown on Congress Street.

The facility will house the four firefighters of Engine 7 — the engineer, who is the driver, an officer and two firefighters. There are three shifts of personnel in a 24-hour period.

One of the firefighters, John Skinner, said that Engine 7, even though it's not a ladder truck, does carry the ladders needed to reach the second floor of a house.

"We can even go up to the third floor, if there's a second-floor porch," he said.

The firefighters also explained that their firefighting gear — the boots, coat, hat and so forth — remain in the fire station, hung up near the engine bay where the truck is parked. "You don't want to bring that gear into your living quarters," Skinner said. "They're loaded with toxic chemicals when we get back."