Community Corner

Update - "Smoking Material" Blamed for Windsor Avenue House Fire

Fire appears to have started on a third floor porch, according to Fire Marshal Steven Trella.

Update - 4:49 p.m.

Smoking material likely caused the house fire at 16 Windsor Avenue, Meriden Fire Marshal Steven Trella said Tuesday afternoon.

According to Trella, the third floor porch where the fire started was used as a designated smoking area for tenants of the third floor unit.

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The fire, he said, he believes was started accidentally. Winds and dry weather Tuesday likely aided in the blaze.

Red Cross is housing 11 residents of the home who are displaced by the damage, Trella said. The fire was primarily contained to the porch, and Trella said the home can be repaired.

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Trella also released a separate notice Tuesday afternoon that open burning would be suspended statewide until further notice, due to dry conditions.

Original Story - 3:25 p.m.

Firefighters say there were no apparent injuries in a house fire at Windsor Avenue and West Main Street Tuesday afternoon that blackened a third floor porch and reportedly displaced a number of residents.

The fire department received several calls about a fire at a three story multifamily home at 16 Windsor Ave. after 2 p.m. Tuesday, according to Fire Marshal Steven Trella. 

When firefighters arrived, flames were leaping out of a covered open-air porch above the roof on the structure's third floor, Trella said. Firefighters knocked down the fire quickly.

"They went up the front stairs," Trella said of firefighters. "They did a nice job."

The porch and much of the roof were blackend in the blaze and Trella said there was smoke, water and other damage to the inside of the home.

Those in the house had evacuated the structure, and some were looked at by Hunters Ambulence personnel, according to Trella, but had received no apparent injuries.

Residents of the three-unit house will be displaced by the blaze, Trella said.  The power company has shut off electricity to the building.

At just after 3 p.m., firefighters were still hosing parts of the third floor, and Trella was headed into the house to inspect the damage. He said he did not yet know what caused the fire.

Trella said he did not know how many people lived at the home. A group of women standing in the nearby Meriden Pawn shop parking lot watching emergency responders said some of them lived at the house. Two girls in the group were crying.

Third floor tenant Yolanda Battista said in Spanish through a friend interpreting that she left the building after someone knocked on her door to tell her about the fire.

This is the second major fire on the block in three months. caught fire on Feb. 7 after a resident allegedly accidently left smoking material of some sort on the bed, according to the Fire Department.

 

Correction: The address of the home that caught fire today was initially reported as 18 Windsor Ave, but the home is really at 16 Windsor Ave. Initial reports came in with the incorrect number.


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