Old Mystic residents concerned about fire training site expansion

Mystic ― Residents are raising health, safety and quality of life concerns in response to a move by the Old Mystic Fire Department to expand the current use of a training site on Main Street.

The parking lot on Main Street across the road from the fire department’s Station No. 1 has been used for years for occasional training, but the department is currently seeking a special use permit from the Town of Stonington to expand the current uses of the property to include live fire training and escape training in two large shipping containers moved to the site late this winter.

Neighbors expressed concerns at a June 6 public hearing on the application including excessive smoke, the accessibility of the trailers to children and the public, and the visual impact of the large containers on property values and the enjoyment of their properties.

“I had a perfect site-- got kicked out of it by the state. We had no other option at the time. I tried to do the right thing—going to the neighbors before we moved it, going to the planning department before we moved it, working, as I always have, with the neighbors. That’s pretty much where we are right now,” Ken Richards, fire chief for the Old Mystic Fire Department, told the commission at the hearing.

Richards told the commission the eight-foot-by-40 foot containers were initially sited at the former Mystic Oral School, but the state terminated the department’s lease agreement early this year. This forced the department to relocate the two trainers: a live fire trainer and a technical rescue trainer.

He said that the department would continue to seek an alternate site for the trainers, but it is crucial to have it within the district in case the department needs to respond to an emergency while training. He said the lot across the street from the department is an ideal location to minimize response time.

Residents expressed their concerns that the trainers were a safety hazard.

“My concern is that there’s many children in our neighborhood,” said Leonard Peta. “I’m worried some kid is going to get up there and fall down and perhaps die.”

Richards said the two-story technical rescue trainer is used to train the department’s 11 full time firefighters and 52 volunteers in ladder work, rope work, rappelling and patient evacuation. He said the safety issue had not occurred to him prior to the public hearing, but that he would address it immediately.

Photos taken on June 16 show a chain across a set of stairs with a sign that reads “private property; no trespassing,” hanging from it. The ladder from the top of the container to the second level is secured with a ladder lock which partially blocks six rungs of the ladder.

On Friday, Richards said he ordered a ladder lock June 7, and installed it when it arrived, approximately 3 days later. He explained that the department has plans to enclose the stairwell with a fence once the special use permit is approved.

Richards said he has met with some of the neighbors since the public hearing to address their concerns. The department will be painting the containers to improve their appearance and has begun meeting with landscapers to discuss ways to obscure the view from neighboring properties.

Additionally, the department is working with Cherenzia & Associates, Ltd on a site plan to present when the public hearing, tentatively scheduled for July 18th, resumes.

Richards noted the department used the site for live burning training in the mid-2000’s, prior to moving the trainer to the former Mystic Oral School site.

The site has been used for training since 1961, though the main uses over the last decade and a half have been extraction training, propane tank fire training and car fire training.

When asked about resident complaints about excessive smoke, Richards said the department conducted eight burns on March 20, and the first one was the only one that caused significant smoke output.

During live fire training, which Richards said would be held approximately six times a year, clean wooden pallets, straw and plywood are lit on fire inside the training container.

He took responsibility for significant smoke produced during the training, explaining that the department had not let the fire get hot enough before opening a roof vent on the container, and that once a fire is hot enough, smoke and heat rise directly up as long as weather conditions are good.

He said he hoped to provide neighbors with a schedule one month in advance of live fire training as well as a reminder a week prior to the event. He added that if weather would cause smoke to disperse through the neighborhood, training would be canceled.

“We’ve been good neighbors since the beginning of time when we first started using it in 1961, and we still plan on being good neighbors,” he said.

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