New London fire marshal highlights 6 recent fires and how to stay safe through prevention

It’s been a busy week for firefighters in New London after six fires broke out across the city, burning homes, sheds and even boats.

The city’s fire marshal, David Heiney, said some of the fires could have been preventable.

On July 13, a fire broke out in a kitchen on Hope Street.

“That fire was caused by unattended cooking,” Heiney said. “There was oil put in the pan. I believe they were cooking fish and they walked away from the stove for a couple minutes, and then there was a flash fire on the stove.”

Heiney advises people to never walk away from a stove during cooking.

“If you do have a fire on the stove top, do not put water on the fire. It will make the fire worse; it’ll just flash. Cover that with either a pot lid or a wet, damp towel over the top of it.”

That same day, a shed behind a car dealership on Broad Street caught fire from discarded smoking materials, according to Heiney.

“Anytime somebody smokes, I want to make sure that they make sure that they take that cigarette butt and discard it properly into a smoking station or a bucket of sand away from anything noncombustible. Taking those cigarette butts and just throwing them into the grass or throwing them into a pile of leaves or anything combustible, you never know if it’s out,” he explained.

The next day, another shed caught fire behind a home on Vauxhall Street. Heiney hasn’t pinpointed what caused it but said there was a lot of plastic inside that caught fire.

About 24 hours later, another fire broke out at a two-family home on Colman Street. One of the two people who ran out had minor burns, compared to the house, which is blackened and charred.

The most important thing you can do to protect your home is have working smoke detectors, according to Heiney. He said in fatal house fires, it’s common that there wasn’t a smoke detector, or it wasn’t working.

“The whole point is to know about fires as soon as they happen,” he said. “So you’re alerted, and you can get out of the house.”

As the crew wrapped up their work at the Coleman Street fire, they were dispatched to Burr’s Marina a mile and a half away. Two boats were burning in the water.

“The problem we saw on this fire was the stern lines burned on one of the boats and had the boat drift out a little farther than we could reach,” Vernon Skau, New London’s fire chief, said.

There’s a lot less room for New London firefighters to work when they’re putting out a fire on a boat compared to a house, so the Goshen Fire Department had to step in.

Things were quiet for a few days, until Monday when flames ripped through a home on Chapel Drive.

The live-in caretaker for the couple there was able to escape, but the homeowners, Daniel and Glenna Moalli, did not. The two had both retired from Lawrence Memorial Hospital, and their colleagues are grieving the tremendous losses.

Heiney said the department is still investigating how that fire began.

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