Milford firefighters responded to a heavy fire on Melba Street Saturday afternoon.
Constant breeze fanned flames that broke out at a three story house on stilts at 74 Melba Street Saturday afternoon, also spreading the blaze to the two houses on either side of it, according to Milford Fire Capt. Greg Carman. 70 and 76 Melba Street are located in close proximity to that house, where the initial 911 call for help came from at about 1:36 p.m. on Saturday. There was heavy fire damage when crews arrived and firefighters had to go into "defensive mode," Carman said.
“Our crews started to do an aggressive attack on the fire but with the winds we’re having today they just fanned it and spread to the adjacent homes," Carman said.
The fire department asked United Illuminating to de-energize the electricity circuit near the Melba Street fire at about 3:30 p.m., which knocked the power out to about 2,900 customers, according to Ed Crowder, a spokesperson for UI. That number was reduced to about 2,000 shortly after and the power company has since fully restored the power, he said.
A mother, father and son live at 74 Melba Street and the son was the only person home at the time of the fire, Carman said based on the preliminary investigation. The son got out safely, but the home has been deemed a total loss.
It's possible that one of the adjacent homes, 70 Melba Street, is also a total loss, Carman said. An elderly resident was home at the time and crews helped her out of the house. She was medically evaluated as a precaution.
The third home at 76 Melba Street sustained a lot of heat, smoke and water damage. No one was home during the blaze and it's unclear how many people lived there.
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Photos and video submitted by Milford resident Mike Smith and shown on his Twitter page, @MikeSmithCT show heavy damage to the middle house of the three buildings, which appears gutted, and shows a partial collapse of the roof of the building.
Milford resident Maria Giaimo said that black smoke covered the sky and that "it was just devastating."
“When I heard that there were three houses involved I’m not surprised," Giaimo said. "The houses are so close together that when one house goes the other ones are going to go as well, unfortunately.”
Milford neighbor Peter Lumley said his thoughts are with the residents in those three homes damaged in the fire.
"This is our neighborhood. This is where we all live and my heart is going out for whoever, those three houses. My heart’s like broken," Lumley said.
The fire marshal is investigating the cause of the fire, which is unknown at this time.
No one was injured.
At one point in the afternoon, 2,026 Milford United Illuminating customers were without power, but it's unclear if the outages are connected to the fire. All power was restored by 4:17 p.m., according to the power company's outage map.
Melba Street was still shut down as of 5:45 p.m.
