By Marianne A. Campolongo
As firefighters arrived on the scene of a fire at 91 Bedford Road in the wee hours of Friday morning, “we were met with an unusually large amount of fire,” said First Assistant Fire Chief Russell Maitland. All seven residents had escaped unharmed when first responders arrived on the scene at 1:09 AM, after receiving the call at the nearby firehouse a minute earlier, according to Maitland. Although there were no injuries, fire destroyed the building, leaving the residents homeless and the Whispering Pines Flower Shop, the building’s commercial tenant, in need of a new location.
Our volunteer firefighters from Chappaqua and Millwood worked throughout the night alongside neighboring crews from Mt. Kisco and Pleasantville to put out the fire. At times the smoke was so thick it nearly obscured the dedicated men and women who were still working as dawn broke hours later to quell the blaze. In fact, like some other nearby residents, it was the smell of smoke being borne on heavy winds that first alerted me to the fire.
Due to the volume of the fire and attendant structural damage to the building, they made a conscious decision to fight the fire from the outside, which takes longer but poses less risk of injury or death, said Maitland. “We operate on a risk benefit analysis. Knowing that everyone was outside of the building and that the damage meant it was likely going to be torn down we chose to employ a defensive strategy and fought the fire from the exterior of the building. There were certain collapses inside the structure and we knew at that point it was a loss so we approached it from the exterior rather than the interior in order not to risk people’s lives,” he said.
The fire was not officially brought “under control” until 5:18 AM, and firefighters didn’t leave the scene until 7:30 AM, said Maitland.
NEIGHBORS HELPING NEIGHBORS
Chief Maitland estimated there were about 40 to 50 firefighters on the scene, working in 15-minute shifts “Firefighting is a labor intensive endeavor,” he said, explaining that firefighters need rehab after each shift before heading back to continue fighting the fire, and that “for every two men fighting the fire, two must be on hand to rescue them.” Neighboring Pleasantville Ambulance Corps was there to rehab the firefighters; the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps stood ready to transport injured firefighters. No firefighters were injured.
