Firefighters challenged by steep roof

BREWSTER—Two firefighters were taken to Putnam Hospital Center while a dozen other volunteers suffered heat exhaustion while battling a blaze in Brewster Monday.

The fire broke out in a two-story wood frame home on Michael Neuner Drive around 3 p.m.

Brewster Fire Department personnel rushed to the scene and when Chief Rick Tofte and his assistant chiefs Shawn Conrad and Dave O’Hara observed smoke emanating from the upper portions of the building while receiving a report that an elderly man was trapped inside, a general alarm was sounded and mutual aid was summoned from three counties.

Manpower and apparatus from Carmel, Lake Carmel, Putnam Lake, Mahopac, Kent, Patterson, Croton Falls and Danbury were summoned.

Crews donned breathing gear and searched the building but found no one. When the flames were knocked down, a secondary search turned up the bodies of two cats which perished in the heat and smoke.

Putnam Deputy Emergency Coordinator Ron Davies called the conditions “horrible. While it might have been a beautiful day for a journey to the beach or to go sunbathing, fighting a fire wearing heavy protective gear drains a firefighter’s strength rapidly. We needed additional reserves and thanks to our mutual aid system, when a call goes out, firefighters respond.”

In addition, other fire crews stood by in fire houses to protect those jurisdictions while men and women were battling the Brewster blaze.

Chief Tofte said he was most concerned with an initial report that the home was a “two-family residence. This building turned out to be a legal two-family home but many adjoining buildings in our community have become illegal rooming houses where make-shift bedrooms are made up of mattresses laying on the floor.”

Chief O’Hara suffered a cut on the wrist caused by broken glass. He was treated at the scene by the Brewster FD Rescue Squad and was taken by ambulance to Putnam Hospital Center where he was stitched up. A veteran Carmel firefighter was overcome by heat exhaustion while venting the roof of the building and had to be rescued by fellow firefighters before being given oxygen and checked out at the hospital.

The Putnam County Fire Investigation Team was summoned and officials said the cause remained under investigation.