Fire Truck Has 2 Inches To Spare

As Firefighters Jason Davis, Tim Doyle, and Daryl Osiecki pulled out of Station 2 onto Circular Avenue to respond to a carbon monoxide call, the top of their engine cleared two inches beneath the garage-door frame.

At any other Hamden fire station, that door frame would be high enough to accommodate a higher engine. What Hamden’s oldest operating fire station may have in historical charm, however, it lacks in the conditions typical of a modern station.

That’s why the town has applied for a state grant to pay for the construction of a new Station 2 on Putnam Avenue, at the intersection with Gallagher Road.

Plans for the new station project that it will cost $4.3 million. The town originally applied for a state grant in 2017, and updated the application in 2019 and is waiting on word from the state.

Osiecki, the lieutenant overseeing the firefighters’ shift at Station 2, stood in the small, well-loved kitchen talking to Fire Chief Gary Merwede when the call came in. Both stopped talking to listen. Osiecki looked up at the screen in the corner of the room to see the yellow band that had just appeared with the details of the call.

“That’s us,” he declared. ​“We’re going out.”

He and his firefighters stepped into apparatus bay where Engine 2 sat, and climbed into the cab. A thick yellow tube was clamped over the exhaust pipe.

Davis, who was driving, started the engine, and pulled carefully out of the gaping doorway. As he did, the yellow tube followed the truck, sliding on a track above and carrying the exhaust outside of the closed apparatus bay, until the truck was mostly outside, at which point the tube detached from the exhaust pipe. The end of the truck passed just beneath the door frame, and the firefighters were off.

Engine 2 is not like its peers in Hamden’s four other fire stations. It’s shorter, at 9 feet and 10 inches. The fire department has to order a special engine for Station 2, where the clearance is ten feet, a vestige of a past when fire engines were much smaller.

Station 2 opened in 1913 as a volunteer company called the Humphrey Fire House. It is now the town’s busiest fire station, serving around 6,000 addresses and about 20,000 people — a third of the town’s population. Nonetheless, it has seen relatively few major structural changes since 1913, though its contents are of course quite different.

The three bays now hold three different pieces of equipment. On one end is Engine 2, in the middle is Rescue 2 (a paramedic vehicle), and on the other end is a raft that came into the fleet two years ago. The wall behind the engine has been bumped back so it can fit.

Between the engine and the rescue vehicle is a desk. People used to just walk up to the fire station to report calls, explained Merwede, so there would always be someone staffing the desk. Now that most people have access to a phone, drop ins are less frequent, but they still happen, he said. Each station still tries to staff its desk at all times, though there is no official schedule for doing so.

House Of Squirrels

The desk’s front features a plaque announcing the unofficial title of the fire house: La Casa De Ardillas, or ​“the house of squirrels.” A squirrel bites a wire, sending electricity jolting in all directions and making the squirrel’s eyes pop.

A few years ago, explained Merwede, the station had a squirrel infestation. One of them got electrocuted by a wire. After that, the department had to call in an exterminator. The squirrels are now gone, but their legacy remains.

A door at the back end of the apparatus bay leads to the kitchen. Firefighters work in shifts of 24 hours: 24 hours on, three days off. That means that a few days a week, they essentially live in the station.

“This is it. This is home. We try to make it as homey as possible,” Osiecki (pictured above) said as he looked around the room. A pie, covered in foil, sat on the table. A few dirty mugs were in the sink.

Above the dining table, a helmet is mounted on a ceiling outcropping. It is the helmet of Lieutenant Frank Critchett.

Critchett was a lieutenant when Merwede was a firefighter in Station 2, where he was stationed for ten years. It is memories of the people who used to work here, said Merwede (pictured below), who give the space so much meaning. ​“He was a larger than life character,” he recalled of Critchett. ​“He had a rough, gravelly voice” that he would use to tell stories.

Off the kitchen is the alarm room, where all of the computer work happens. Two computers sit on a cramped desk with gray rolling chairs.

The shift commander’s room is through one door, and through another are the officers’ quarters. There, blue lockers separate beds tucked away in the corners of the room, leaving only narrow passageways through which to move.

With the call volume at the station, firefighters almost never sleep through a night, said Osiecki.

Through another door is a storage room. It houses the department’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) bus, as well as the town’s third rescue vehicle. In one corner is a jumble of gym equipment. This used to be a maintenance facility, but that has since moved up to Shepard Avenue. And before that: ​“Put your head back and say 1942, and they were having dances in here,” said Merwede.

As Hamden Historian and retired firefighter Dave Johnson explained, volunteer fire departments used to be important social hubs. Community events took place in Station 2. The basement had a bowling lane. When fires temporarily forced schools or churches out of their normal rooms, they sometimes held services or classes at the fire station. (Read about, and listen to, more fire department history here).

Downstairs, where that bowling lane used to be, the firefighters of the station have built a makeshift training course. The department does not have its own training facility.

Plywood walls rest on the poles that hold up the ceiling, rotating so they can make a number of different simulated apartment or house configurations. On Wednesday, an old couch sat against one wall with a life-size dummy lying face-down. In front of the maze sat an armchair.

Among those plywood ​“walls,” firefighters practice rescuing dummies among simulations of the dangers they might face in a real fire. A mess of ropes hung down in the middle of one of the ​“rooms.” Osiecki explained that it simulates the electrical wires that sometimes fall from the ceiling in a fire. They can get caught on equipment and rip off masks.

“That will kill you,” he said.

In another corner of the basement, you can stand beneath the low ceiling and look up at the concrete that holds up 50,000 pounds of metal. Usually there would not be a basement below a fire engine, said Merwede. That’s an improvement that can come with the new fire station.

Merwede said that the new station will house everything that currently lives at Station 2 along with the department’s tower. The tower sits atop a truck and reaches a height of 75 feet. The apparatus weighs 32 tons. The new facility will have drive-through bays, so firefighters don’t have to back trucks in.

The new station will also house administrative space, and the chief will move his office there from the old town hall. The battalion chief, who currently works out of another station, will also move to Station 2.

If the state gives the grant and Hamden can build its new station, the firefighters of Station 2 may miss being surrounded by over 100 years of firefighting history. But with around 12,000 calls a year, firefighting is no longer what it was in 1913.

“It’s not something that can really continue on as a fire station,” said Johnson.