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Nine families are in need of temporary housing after 55 firefighters spent hours battling a blaze in the Hill neighborhood.
The fire began at 246 – 8 Hallock Ave. Sunday shortly before 9 a.m.
Here’s what happened, according to Assistant Fire Chief Justin McCarthy:
Firefighters saw fire and smoke when they arrived, and went inside the building. Luckily, all inhabitants had made it out safely.
The firefighters found the fire “traveling pretty aggressively,” too much so to safely attempt to deal with it from the inside.
So the crews “went into defensive mode,” using water from outside to try to “knock it down” as quickly as possible. A second alarm was called, with more firefighters arriving to help. It took over two hours to get the fire under control.
One firefighter reported a minor injury.
A house next door also had water damage. In all, nine families — 16 adults and 10 children — were displaced from the two buildings. The Red Cross is helping them find temporary lodging.
The origin of the fire is under investigation. There was no indication at this point of suspicious activity.
The building is owned by a limited liability corporation based in Milford called Jo & Ze, according to the city’s land records database. The LLC’s principals are listed as Adel Joobeur and Mehdi Zeramdini of Milford and Khaled Joober of Canada. (The secretary of the state’s commercial database offers those two different spellings for Adel Joobeur and Khaled Joober’s last names.)
