Investigation Offers More Details

Of Canaan House Fire/Explosion At Fairfield Hills

By Andrew Gorosko

An investigation conducted by the state fire marshal’s office explains what likely happened on the rainy, windy night of April 13, when an external boiler that was used to heat Canaan House at Fairfield Hills caught fire and exploded, consuming itself in flames and heavily damaging the section of Canaan House that was then used by the public school system’s alternative high school program.

At 10:54 pm that night, the town’s emergency dispatch center received a call from a Mile Hill Road South resident alerting firefighters of the explosion. Several dozen Newtown Hook and Ladder, Sandy Hook, and Botsford firefighters responded to the scene to find that a large external heating-fuel tank had ruptured and caught fire, shooting flames upward about 35 feet. The fuel tank, which contained thousands of gallons of #2 heating fuel, fed an adjacent external boiler for the 208,000-square-foot red-brick building.

Two firefighters received minor injuries at the fire and were treated at the scene by the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

The fire and explosion caused the alternative high school program to relocate after its quarters, which were directly adjacent to the destroyed boiler/fuel tank, were damaged in the fire.

At the time of the fire, the state still owned Fairfield Hills, a former state psychiatric hospital. The town now owns the Fairfield Hills core campus, including Canaan House, where the town has offices.

In an April 20 report, Allan Platt, a state boiler inspector, writes that an inspection showed the fire-damaged boiler to be “quite dirty with accumulated soot, indicating lack of cleaning and/or imperfectly regulated combustion.”

“The fire damage to the boiler was external, and did not originate with an over-pressure, low-water, or a combustion explosion occurrence…The most probable source of this fire and resultant tank rupture/explosion was improper clearances between the bottom of the wooden/tarpaper roof and the top of the boiler, and between the [exhaust] stack and [the] roofing material where the stack penetrated the roof,” Mr Platt wrote. The boiler had been enclosed by a plywood shell to protect it from the elements. The boiler was mounted on a flatbed trailer.

Minimal Clearances

The boiler was in need of a burner/air ratio adjustment and/or a cleaning, resulting in the boiler exhaust stack reaching an overly hot temperature of approximately 500 degrees, Mr Platt adds.

The overly hot exhaust stack temperature and the minimal clearances between the boiler and the plywood enclosure “would have dried out the plywood in the localized area where the stack penetrated the [plywood] structure, making the [wooden] material more susceptible to fire,” he adds.

“The fire spread throughout the [plywood[ structure and caused the tank rupture/explosion,” Mr Platt writes.

In his July 14 report on the fire, state police Detective Kenneth Christensen writes that, “Based on burn patterns, lines of demarcation, and physical evidence available, the fire traveled from the area of origin and spread through the adjacent windows of the alternative education center.”

A security guard was on duty at Fairfield Hills at the time of the fire, Det Christensen wrote. The guard was in the security office about the time of shift change and heard the explosion, after which he drove to Canaan House where he saw the wooden enclosure around the boiler completely afire.

The security officer told state police that it was not unusual for children to enter some of the buildings at Fairfield Hills at night. Sometimes the youths would set off fireworks and run off, the security guard told state police. The guard told state police that he had not seen anyone on the grounds or anything unusual on the night of the fire.

Det Christensen notes in his report that the force of the explosion sent pieces of plywood flying into a nearby tree and parking lot. A section of the oil tank enclosure was found about 150 feet south of the building, he adds.

Damage to Canaan House was limited due to firefighters’ work to extinguish the blaze, he wrote.

“The boiler was …known to have had numerous maintenance problems, in which the building was closed at times due to lack of heat,” Det Christensen adds.

Two propane tanks near the boiler had some fire exposure damage, but those tanks did not vent or burn during the fire and did not cause the fire, according to the report. Firefighters wetted down the tanks after arriving at the fire.

“It is more probable than not the fire was related to the clearance factor, where the exhaust stack penetrated the [plywood enclosure] roof. The exact cause cannot be stated with absolute certainty due to the amount of damage. Other electrical factors were not completely eliminated,” Det Christensen wrote.

The detective noted that there apparently was no inspection of the boiler or its plywood enclosure after the boiler was moved in January to the location where it caught fire on April 13.

That external heating system also was the source of a massive heating fuel spill outside Canaan House on the snowy weekend of December 6–7, 2003. More than 4,500 gallons of #2 heating fuel spilled, causing extensive soil and groundwater contamination, which required a lengthy and expensive state cleanup project.

Following the fuel spill, the state moved the boiler and fuel tank about 50 yards, positioning the devices alongside a different section of the building’s exterior. A wooden enclosure was then built around the boiler.

Of the Canaan House fire, Newtown Fire Marshal Bill Halstead said September 22, “It was a dirty boiler. It wasn’t operating efficiently.”

The device was operating at a temperature hotter than normal and the plywood enclosure was positioned too close to the boiler, resulting in the fire, he said.

Mr Halstead assisted the state fire marshal’s office in its investigation.