At the start of a busy time with college students back in town and a new NFL season, New Haven’s Trinity Bar and Restaurant on Orange Street is closed and boarded up following last Friday’s fire.
The fire started in a second-floor apartment right above Trinity Bar, but the cause remains under investigation, a New Haven Fire Marshal tells NBC Connecticut.
"You’ll never beat the Irish," Trinity co-owner and head chef Shane Carty said. "We’ll be back again, bigger and better, bigger and stronger."
Carty told NBC Connecticut the past week has been, "horrible, absolutely horrible, I keep waking up thinking it’s just a nightmare."
Carty’s nightmare began last Friday afternoon when the flames broke out while he was running an errand. He said he could see the smoke from the highway driving back to his business.
"We’re just dealing with all the water that came down afterwards and it's just the lingering smell of smoke," Carty said.
Carty took NBC Connecticut inside where staff is taking inventory of what can be saved. All the food and any open bottles had to be thrown away, he said.
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"We have to open," Carty said. "Our life saving’s is in this place. I have a family, we all have families, I can’t just sit around."
The Devil’s Gear Bike Shop owner Matthew Feiner rushed into the burning building to help before later being taken away on a stretcher to the hospital because of smoke inhalation.
"I’m having a hard time getting a breath and keeping breath," Feiner said.
Feiner stayed overnight at Yale-New Haven Hospital before being released last Saturday.
"We knew the guy inside, we knew they were yelling that there was someone on the floor upstairs and we knew who it was so we kept going back in looking for him," Feiner said.
The man who lives in one of the apartments and suffered burns to 70 percent of his body, according to New Haven Fire Chief John Alston, got out by the back fire escape. His identity has not yet been released.
All 22 Trinity employees are now without work, Carty said, adding that Christy’s, one of the other Irish pubs in New Haven, has offered some of them jobs in the meantime.
Inside the bar, one of Carty’s prized possessions, a picture of the Trinity Library in Dublin, wasn’t damaged.
"I’m delighted it survived," Carty said. "This was a huge expense when we opened first, and plus it’s the centerpiece of the bar you know."
