Milford Gets Updated Alert System

The City of Milford has implemented a state-of-the-art citywide notification system to alert citizens about emergencies and other community news. The Milford Alerts notification system, operated in partnership with Everbridge, enables the City to provide essential information quickly and for a variety of situations, such as severe weather, fires, floods, unexpected road closures, or evacuation of buildings or neighborhoods.

These notifications can be sent to a variety of devices such as home phone, work phone, cell phone, text messaging devices, e-mail and more. You choose what devices you are contacted on and in what order you would like to be contacted.

In addition to traditional emergency alerts, the system also allows you to sign up to receive a variety of other important community alerts and informational bulletins that interest you. For more information about the new Milford Alerts system, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions Page.

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Black Out On New Haven Avenue

This evening at about 6:00 P.M. New Haven Avenue went completely dark. The bitter cold weather, and a great many electric heaters, holiday lights, high winds and the peak period of normal electrical use, was too much for an electrical system.

Reports arrived that the nearby substation, malfunctioned and possibly caught on fire. Other reports indicate downed power lines that caught fire, Emergency responders arrived at the scene, along with utility workers, to begin the process of restoring the electric to several thousand people in the North end of Milford.

UI Operators said the power may be down for several hours until the work was complete. There was no immediate feed back on the official nature or cause of the blackout. Our source Mike Giordano a former firefighter, indicated that under such circumstances utility workers are not even permitted access to the the substation until all fires are out and the area is deemed safe. These periods of time can vary depending on the intensity, and severity of the problem.

Mike witnessed several fire trucks working at the scene when he passed by it by way of the I95 exit ramp in the North End of Milford. He was not permitted to get close or directly question anyone while the emergency work was ongoing.

The problem will be fixed in the late of night and business will should resume on schedule Wednesday morning. Fortunately this problem happened at the end of the work day limiting the amount of downtime suffered by local area businesses on New Haven Ave. Residents left without heat, should expect things back to normal in the next few hours.

(Photo of a blackout, not the one mentioned in article)

Milford Firefighters Engage In A Safety Drill

In full gear on a hot day, Firefighter Anthony Vitale crawled through a narrow opening between wall studs and across a slab of plywood in a vacant motel room.

Suddenly, the plywood gave way, spilling Vitale onto his side on the floor.

Luckily, for Vitale, it was not the real thing. It was a simulation of what it would feel like if the floor of a burning building collapsed beneath him, part of a department-wide training exercise Thursday morning in the vacant, single-story motel rooms behind the Howard Johnson Hotel on Boston Post Road.

The "Mayday Training" was designed to prepare city firefighters how to react if trapped while battling a fire, whether they're dropped into a basement, caught in an attic with nowhere to go, or buried under a fallen ceiling, said Capt. Christopher Zak, training officer and fire spokesman.

Thursday marked the first of three phases, which will include training other firefighters how to rescue a comrade in trouble, as well as to prepare commanding officers and dispatchers how to do their parts in orchestrating a "Mayday" response, said Assistant Chief Robert Healey.

"The idea is to save lives, and that's what we're looking at," he said, adding that department officials are grateful to hotel management for allowing the training, which even brought dispatchers to the scene.

Vitale said he and other firefighters were rotated through different challenges during the roughly three-hour training, "so it's kind of a surprise when you get in there."

"Any time you train, if you can get the conditions as close to what we would see in the field, it's helpful," he said. "You never plan on falling through a floor. You think you have it -- you have a plan -- and then there's a curveball. We train for the curveballs, essentially. Train for the worst, hope for the best."

Firefighters have been known to delay calls for help and try to get out of a sticky situation on their own to avoid being the brunt of teasing the next day, Zak said.

He'd like to see protocols so clearly defined that there's no room for personal interpretation, hence drills on how to request help -- a firefighter in trouble should call "Mayday" and offer location, unit, surrounding conditions, actions taken and those needed -- and how to give it.

"We're trying to put them in a situation where they react automatically," he said. "Like muscle memory." The field training was followed by classroom training later in the day, he added.

The last time a Milford firefighter lost contact and got disoriented in a building was Sept. 9, 1989, when a massive inferno consumed Sante's Manor banquet hall on Naugatuck Avenue. The lost man called for help, and firefighters came through the back of the building and found him quickly, Zak said.

The last time a floor collapsed under city firefighters was during last December's fatal Brookdale Avenue fire. The burning house didn't have a full basement in that spot, so firefighters fell only about three feet, he said.


ORIGINAL STORY