Daniel Tepfer, Staff Writer
Published: 10:38 p.m., Sunday, August 29, 2010
BRIDGEPORT -- Rich Graczyk remembers when the Remington Arms plant on Helen Street was a bustling place.
"There were three shifts, and we were working all the time making shotgun shells and boxing them. Everywhere you looked there was people working and machines going."
On Sunday afternoon, the only machines going at the long-closed plant was an excavator, ripping apart the outside walls so that firefighters could get to the flames beyond.
Formal demolition of the building was set to begin at 7 a.m. Monday morning with a large crane that is being brought over from Long Island, N.Y. At 9:30 a.m. city officials will be meeting at the site.
The fire broke out in the hulking brick plant Saturday morning. Firefighters initially had it under control by Saturday night but new hot spots broke out and they were continuing to hit areas of the upper floors with water throughout Sunday. They said the wall and floor timbers in the building were coated in oil from the machines used in the manufacturing process, and that was making it difficult to completely extinguish the fire.
"It's so embedded in the building we can't reach it with our apparatus," said Assistant Fire Chief Manuel Firpi. "It's like a foggy night over there, but it's all smoke."
No one was injured in the fire and fire officials said the cause of the blaze was still under investigation.
Because of the heavy smoke conditions, Firpi said area residents were advised to remain in their homes. He said the state Department of Enviromental protection has placed particulate monitoring devices around the building.
The huge buildings, which cut through the center of the city's East Side, are often home to squatters and the target of thieves looking for scrap metal.
Graczyk, who started at Remington in 1980, recalls it was a great place to work. "The benefits were great; they even had their own doctor there," he said.
Some longtime workers claim that during the Korea and Vietnam War eras there were so many people working at the plant that workers would clock in for the morning shift, then leave and go to work at the neighboring General Electric plant and then return to complete their shift at Remington and supervisors were none the wiser.
But Remington could also be a demanding workplace.
"I remember they had this big sign in the plant that listed the number of days without a worker getting hurt. If you did say you got hurt on the job, they would come to your house and pull you out of bed and take you down to their nurse to make sure you were hurt," Graczyk explained.
By the time Graczyk was laid off in 1985, he said the plant had been dramatically downsized.
"Most of the operation had already been moved to other locations around the country," he said.
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