Thomas Breen photo
Fred Christmas: "I'm thankful everybody got out. "
New Haven Fire Twitter photo
Monday night's blaze on Dixwell; 7 firefighters were injured fighting the fire.
Fred Christmas was on his way to Stop & Shop to pick up a steak to grill in his backyard when he got a call from his landlord.
“Fred,” he recalled her saying. “The house is on fire.”
For the past quarter century, Christmas — a former Dixwell alder candidate who runs an asbestos mitigation company and is a regular volunteer with community groups like Women of the Village — has lived in a second-floor apartment at 452 Dixwell Ave.
That house, and nearly all of his belongings, went up in flames at 7 p.m. Monday in a two-alarm blaze that displaced eight tenants and injured seven firefighters, according to Asst. Chief Danny Coughlin.
Coughlin said that two firefighters were hospitalized, and promptly discharged, with heat-related injuries. Fortunately no tenants were hurt. He said the cause of the fire is still under investigation. He described the blaze as one of the hottest he’s seen in recent years, given the high summer temperature outside the house and the roiling flames inside.
On Tuesday morning, Christmas stood on the sidewalk staring up at the burnt-out, three-story house. City land records show the home is owned by Felicia Stafford.
“The house is unlivable right now,” he said. “Everything’s gone.” He expressed gratitude that he and the building’s other tenants all survived the fire without suffering any injuries themselves.
Christmas spent last night at his daughter’s place. He plans on going to a hotel tonight, with the help of the Red Cross. After his hotel stay ends, he doesn’t know where he’ll be.
“We will rebuild,” he promised.
He passed a pile of charred debris from his apartment — a warped air conditioner, the legs of a chair, mixed among shards of glass on the ground — as he headed towards the building’s backyard.
Christmas said he was preparing to have his granddaughter over for a backyard cookout Monday night. He had filled his inflatable pool with water, got out the deck chairs. That backyard hangout never took place.
Christmas said that one of his few possessions to survive the fire was a commemorative wooden staff he received from a local Juneteenth committee this summer in honor of his community service as an elder in the Dixwell community.
The survival of this award when so much else was lost, he said, “means for me to keep going strong. That’s it.”
Christmas tours his fire-damaged home's backyard.
