2011 Will Be Remembered For Its Wild Weather

By Andrew Gorosko

The year 2011 likely will be remembered by town emergency services staffers as the year of severe storms, when multiple snowstorms and rainstorms produced the wettest year on record and caused widespread damage and historic power outages.

In late December 2010 and throughout January 2011, a series of heavy snowstorms produced the most snow that had fallen locally during such a short span, resulting in more roof collapses due to the weight of accumulated than had occurred in the past.

Notable were the collapses of three large buildings used for the storage of construction materials at the BlueLinx facility at 201 South Main Street. The 22-acre site, where the structures have been demolished, is now for sale.

In late August, Tropical Storm Irene walloped the town with heavy rains and winds that caused extensive, lengthy power outages, well exceeding such damage caused by previous storms. About 85 percent of the local Connecticut Light & Power Company (CL&P) customers lost their power following that rainstorm.

The negative effects of Irene, however, paled in comparison to the damage wreaked by Winter Storm Alfred in late October, when the heavy wet snow that fell caused an unprecedented number of lengthy electric outages in Newtown and throughout the state. At one point after the storm, about 97 percent of CL&P’s local customers were without electricity.

In early March, a combination of heavy rains and a melting snowpack upriver on the Housatonic in Massachusetts caused local flooding along the river, prompting many calls to local firefighters help pump out basements that held between a few inches and a few feet of water.

 Town Emergency Management Director Bill Halstead said that he has never seen so much destructive weather occur locally during a one-year period.

To better deal with emergency communications during such intense storms, the town put into service its new Emergency Operations Center, a radio dispatching and emergency planning facility located at the Fairfield Hills campus.

Even An Earthquake

Also, in late August, some residents were startled and surprised when they felt the rumbling seismic waves emanating from a rare 5.8-magnitude earthquake whose epicenter was located several hundred miles away in Virginia.

 During the past year, local volunteer firefighters responded to an unprecedented number of serious structure fires, several of which destroyed or heavily damaged homes.

Mr Halstead, who also is the town fire marshal, said he cannot recall a one-year period during which there were so many serious structure fires locally.

Among the many structure fires, in January, an accidental overnight fire caused by malfunctioning equipment destroyed the distinctive Speidel residence at 7 Taunton Lane. There were no injuries. The Speidel family is now rebuilding at the site, creating a home similar to the one that was destroyed by the blaze.

In June, an overnight fire of undetermined origin destroyed the Pettengill residence at 31 Great Hill Road while that house was under renovation with no one living there. The cause of that blaze remains undetermined. One Hawleyville firefighter received a minor arm cut while working at the scene.

In October, an accidental fire heavily damaged the Gonzalez-Ryan residence at 1 Winslow Road, off Great Hill Road. There were no injuries.

In November, an accidental fire destroyed an antique barn at Main Street and also damaged an adjacent antique house at East Street in the town center. There were no injuries.

Newtown Hook & Ladder, Company No 1, the volunteer firefighting unit based in the town center, this year dropped two court appeals that it had pending in Danbury Superior Court over the Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC) and the Borough Zoning Commission (BZC) both having rejected the fire company’s proposal to construct an 11,414-square-foot firehouse at 12 Sugar Street (Route 302).

Under the Sugar Street firehouse proposal, the Borough of Newtown Land Trust, Inc, and the R. Scudder Smith Family Partnership would have donated land for the project. Mr Smith is the owner/publisher of The Newtown Bee.

Besides the possibility of building a new firehouse on town-owned land at 45 Main Street, near the fire company’s existing deteriorated firehouse, officials have been considering acquiring some privately owned South Main Street land for a firehouse, specifically a 1.6-acre parcel at 35 South Main Street, at the corner of South Main Street and Borough Lane. Fire company members have long sought new quarters, but have repeatedly encountered stumbling blocks in achieving that goal.

During 2011, members of the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Association and the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps considered plans to create a new facility for town ambulance crews at Fairfield Hills to replace outmoded facilities that the corps now uses at 77 Main Street.

Crime News

Among the most notable crime stories of 2011 was the continuing prosecution of two former Newtown police officers who each were arrested in March for allegedly having stolen large sums of money from the Newtown Police Union’s financial accounts.

Both Andrew Stinson, 35, of Watertown, and Domenic Costello, 33, of Stratford, are scheduled to next appear in court on January 18. Each man has pleaded not guilty to each of the multiple felony charges pending against them.

According to court documents, approximately $187,307 was stolen from police union accounts. Of that sum, Mr Stinson is listed as being responsible for $95,668 of the missing money, and Mr Costello for $91,639 of the missing funds, according to court papers.

Each of the men were officers of the police labor union when they allegedly stole the money. Both men resigned their police jobs before their arrests.

This month, David Csanadi, 35, formerly of Aunt Park Lane, pleaded not guilty in US District Court in Bridgeport to three counts of producing child pornography and to one count of possession of child pornography.

Csanadi has been held in state custody since last April when he was arrested on state charges including three counts of first-degree sexual assault, three counts of risk of injury or impairing the morals of children, three counts of illegal sexual contact with a child, and one count of third-degree possession of child pornography. Csanadi, who has pleaded not guilty to all ten state charges, is being held on $1 million bail at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield.

Also this month, Joanne Osmolik, 51, of Newtown waived her right to indictment and also pleaded guilty in US District Court in Bridgeport to one count of wire fraud stemming from her embezzlement of more than $1.5 million from her Shelton employer, Latex International. Sentencing is scheduled for March 9.

In April, the Chase Bank branch office at 30 Church Hill Road was the target of a robbery. In the following weeks, police arrested a Wolcott man who allegedly robbed the bank and a Woodbury man who allegedly drove the getaway car from the bank.

In other crime news, in January, a Texas man, who pleaded guilty in October 2010 to one count of distributing a hallucinogenic substance, was sentenced in Bridgeport Superior Court, receiving an effective five-year prison term for the crime, which is linked with a Newtown teen’s untimely death in Monroe in May 2010.

Quentin Ham, now 24, of North Richland Hills, Texas, and formerly of Newtown, received a ten-year prison term, which would be suspended after Ham serves five years in prison.

The lifeless body of Danielle Jacobsen, 17, of Tunnel Road, Newtown, was found in a shallow pond at a Monroe condominium complex in May 2010.

An autopsy indicated that she died an accidental death caused by asphyxia due to drowning. The autopsy report added that Jacobsen’s ingestion of the hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine, commonly known as DMT, constituted “a significant condition contributing to death, but not resulting in the underlying cause.”

Ham had provided the drug to Jacobsen before she died, resulting in his criminal prosecution.

Also in 2011, the Newtown Police Department observed its 40th year as an independent municipal law enforcement agency. Before 1971, local law enforcement was supervised by a resident state trooper who oversaw a constabulary.

In 2011, the 46-member town police department reorganized, with the number of lieutenant positions increasing from two to three, and the number of sergeant’s jobs decreasing from eight to seven.