Hamden Fire Retirees' Assn.

Major fire launches a transitional year for the Hamden Fire Department

(Originally published on the Local 2687 website in January 2008)

Unless otherwise noted, all black and white photos below are by John Mongillo, Jr.

It has been forty years, but Jean Law will never forget the early morning hours of Friday, January 12, 1968, when she was wakened by loud voices outside her South New Road home. Peeking out her front picture window, Jean didn’t see any people, only a huge orange glow reflecting on the houses across the street. But it was a different story when she looked out her rear window, through the leaf-bare trees across Mill River to Broadway. Now well into her eighties, Jean easily recalls how she sat by the window that morning, watching one of the most spectacular blazes in Hamden history.

According to newspaper accounts, as well as recollections from firefighters who were there, a truck driver heading north on Ridge Road at about 3:45 that morning noticed a glow in the sky. Checking it out, the man drove his truck down Broadway to the George W. Fleming Co., where he found the south end of the rambling 133-year old brick building fully involved. He was the only spectator.

The truck driver then raced up Ives to Whitney and pulled onto the ramp at Station 5. In those somewhat simpler times Hamden firehouses were always unlocked, so the guy had no trouble getting inside. He ran to the watch desk, picked up the “house phone” and began barking “Fire!” over the loud speakers of every fire station in town.

Firefighters Mario “Bucky” Serafino and Gerry Wolf, who had been asleep upstairs at Station 5, were able to relay further details to dispatcher Wilbur Baker over the inside PBX line. Baker immediately dispatched Bucky and Gerry on Engine 5, as well as Engine 4, Ladder 1 (at Station 2), Rescue 2 (at Station 4), and then “toned out” the volunteers of Co. 5.

According to an account in The Hamden Chronicle, the building had been erected in 1835 by James Ives as the Mt. Carmel Brass Works. Later, it was occupied by W. Woodruff and Sons, which manufactured various hardware items during the early half of the 20^th Century.

At the time of the fire, the principal occupant of the building was the George W. Fleming Co., manufacturers of cutlery (see related story at the bottom of this page).

However, the manufacturing end of the business had moved to Wallingford only a few months earlier.  By the time of the fire, the Fleming Co. portion of the building was being used only as a warehouse for their products. The Ives Street end of the building complex previously housed the Sterling Beverage Co. By January 1968, Sterling Beverage had rented their part of the building to the Cott Beverage Co. of New Haven for storage.

With the building well involved when the first apparatus arrived, the main objective was saving the undamaged portions of the structure, as well as protecting the adjacent exposures on Broadway. The home of the Rexford Barnes family, right next door at 40 Broadway, was only about twenty feet from the southern end of the building.

It was a bitter cold night, with temperatures hovering around zero. Parallel 2½” water supply lines were pumped from a 3-way hydrant on Ives Street near New Rd. Two ancient 2-way hydrants were located further down Broadway at #58 and #100, and at least one of them was frozen. The Register reported, “Hose lines were stretched to nearby Mill River in order to pump water, but Chief [V. Paul] Leddy noted that firemen had some difficulty with pumps freezing intermittently.”

Retired Battalion Chief Thomas Doherty, a seven-year veteran at the time, recalls having been recently transferred from Headquarters (now Station 4) to Station 2, where he was assigned to drive Ladder 1, a 1958 Maxim 75-foot aerial ladder truck. When the alarm sounded, Firefighters Doherty and Bill Mulcahy responded from Station 2 in the open-cab truck in sub-zero temperatures. Today, Chief Doherty recalls that by the time they got to the fire they were both frozen stiff. They were ordered to set up the aerial ladder pipe to protect the Ives Street end of the building, which was saved and remains standing to this day. Despite the intense radiant heat and flying brands, efforts to protect the Barnes’ home and the other homes immediately south of the building were successful, as well.

Firefighters Ed Doiron and Mickey Cantarella were on Engine 6 at 21 Merritt Street. The only paid company left in service, they relocated to Station 3 on Putnam Avenue to cover the town with Volunteer Co. 8. [NOTE: No career firefighters were assigned to Co. 9 until the “new” Station 9 was opened in December 1968.]

Ff. Charlie Carlson, Lt. Ken Harrington and Ff. Joe Shields take a break after the fire was under control.

The shift commander was Deputy Chief Joseph Hromadka (above in white helmet), who told the Register that the blaze was “one of the largest that he could remember” in his 32 years on the Department. Chief Hromadka was one of the original two shift commanders to be appointed from among the ranks of the career firefighters when the Department was reorganized with paid officers in 1942.

Having joined Volunteer Co. 5 in October 1966, I did not yet have a “Plectron” radio, the dinosaur plug-in ancestor of today’s pagers. So, after two morning classes at SCSC, I finally got to the scene well after the fire had been knocked down, but just in time to help roll up the hundreds of feet of 2½ that had spaghettied all over Broadway.

As I recall, the firefighters on Engine 5 that day shift were Robert “Ace” Callahan and Ray Carofano. Once the hose was rolled up, a fellow Co. 5 volunteer, Bill Kelly, and I rode Engine 5 to Station 2 to help change hose. This was my first ride on a tailboard.

When we arrived at 2’s, the “paid guys” were only too happy to let us assist in repacking Engine 5 with 1,000 feet of fresh 2½. We were eager to pitch in and learn how to keep the end folds even with something called a "Flying Dutchman." This was still a couple of years before all hose beds were split into separate bays of 2½” and 3” hose for parallel lays, and seventeen years before the introduction of large diameter hose.

Some modern historians say that 1968 was a transitional year for America. On a somewhat smaller scale, 1968 was also a transitional year for the Hamden Fire Department.

At the time of the Fleming Company fire in January, Engine 1 was a 1938 Seagrave 600 g.p.m. pumper at Station 2 – the Department’s spare.

Engine 2 was a 1959 Maxim “cab-forward” 750 g.p.m. pumper.

Engine 3 was a 1954 Maxim 750 g.p.m. pumper.

Engine 4 was a 1965 Mack 750 g.p.m. pumper, the Department’s first commercial-chassis apparatus since the Diamond-T engines of the early 1940s.

And Engines 5 & 6 were identical 1951 and 1952 Maxim 750 g.p.m. pumpers.

In 1968, Hamden’s first paid Fire Marshal, Al Purce, and the first Superintendent of Alarms & Apparatus, Clem Wetmore, were both nearing retirement but were still on the job.

The Department’s only ladder truck was the aforementioned 1958 75-foot Maxim “Junior” Aerial at Station 2. The rescue units – this was three years before Hamden’s first group of EMTs – were 1958 and 1960 International Travelalls, similar to today’s Chevy Suburbans.

By the end of 1968, the Town had purchased two new identical Maxim S-model 1000 GPM pumpers that were placed in service at Stations 3 and 4. The 1965 Mack became Engine 2. The 1959 Maxim cab-forward became Engine 1, and the 1938 Seagrave "canopy-cab" was sold, regrettably, to a party who scrapped it for the value of its brass pump.

Hamden's first new fire station since the Hamden Fire Department was created under the Connecticut General Statutes in 1925 was dedicated on December 8, 1968.  Station 9 opened with one paid man on each of the three platoons.  "Paid" Engine 9 was the 1951 Maxim pumper.

By the end of 1968, Marshal Purce and Supt. Wetmore had retired.  Their vacancies were filled by Captain Bob “Bubby” O’Donnell and Asst. Supt. Richard Lostritto, respectively.

Also in 1968, the Town and the Hamden Paid Firemen’s Sick Benefit Association, which had become the bargaining unit for non-management fire personnel, agreed on the implementation of a 42-hour workweek to commence on October 5, 1970.  Since 1951, line personnel had worked an average of 56 hours a week (four days on, two days off, etc.).

Two years later, old Station 3 on Putnam Avenue and Station 6 on Merritt Street were both closed when “new” Station 3 opened at Hartford Turnpike and Ridge Road in September of 1970. The new station housed Engine 3, Engine 6, Rescue 1, the Deputy Chief (shift commander), and a second truck company, Ladder 2, a new 1970 Maxim 100-foot aerial truck.

When they were delivered in the late 1950s, the 1958 Maxim aerial ladder truck and the 1959 Maxim “cab-forward” pumper were both painted white, the Hamden Board of Fire Commissioners being somewhat enamored of the New Haven "look."   But in 1971, five years after a charter revision put the fire chief squarely in charge of the Department, the 1958 Maxim ladder and the 1959 Maxim pumper were repainted red.  The truck also received a new convertible-type soft top that kept the rain off your head, but did little to abate the frigid winter temperatures.

The '58 Maxim aerial ladder truck remained at Station 2 until April 9, 1976, when it was transferred to Station 5’s new annex built the previous year.  In November of 1984 the truck was transferred once again, this time to to Station 9.  The following year, it was removed from service and redesignated "Truck 2."  The 1970 100-foot aerial ladder truck, now designated “Truck 1,” became the Department’s only truck company. Both trucks were retired in early 1990.

The two white International rescue trucks were removed from service in 1971 when the Department’s first “modular” unit, Rescue 1, was assigned to Station 4. The ornate gold leafing that decorated the new bright red 1971 Ford cab and box resulted in the somewhat whimsical, if not affectionate nickname, “the Circus Wagon.”

For the next several years, Engine 2 handled all rescue calls in the south end of Hamden.  With the introduction of paramedic service, Rescue 2, on a 1975 Ford chassis, went in service at Station 2 on April 9, 1976.