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Live wires trap Waterbury firefighter on truck while battling house blaze, official says
Christine Dempsey 3/17/2023 CTInsider.comWATERBURY — A firefighter was trapped on top of a truck when live electrical wires came down as crews were fighting a blaze Wednesday night, a fire official said.
He wasn’t injured, Deputy Chief Robert Stoeckert said.
The fire in a vacant house in the 60 block of East Farm Street was reported to the Waterbury Fire Department about 9:45 p.m., Stoeckert said. There was heavy fire on the first floor when firefighters arrived.
“It had a significant head start prior to our arrival,” he said.
The decision was made not to fight the fire from inside the house, which he described as “dilapidated,” but to attack it from the outside with aerial hoses, Stoeckert said.
But as one of the firefighters was on top of the truck setting up the aerial ladder, wires fell on it, he said. If he put a foot on the ground while still touching the truck, he could have been electrocuted, so he stayed put while someone contacted Eversource.
“The safest thing for him to do was to stay on the apparatus,” Stoeckert said.
An Eversource worker arrived and shut off the flow of electricity, making it safe for the firefighter to get off the truck, he said.
The vacant house was heavily damaged and will likely be razed, the deputy chief said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
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