Crews Continue to Extinguish Hot Spots After Fire at Abandoned Waterbury Factory

Crews are still working to put out hot spots from a fire that collapsed part of an abandoned factory in Waterbury on Saturday night.

They've been hosing down the area for hours and are putting out hot spots. The fire started around 8 p.m. on Saturday.

According to Mayor Neil O'Leary, the building was built in 1880 and used to be the Waterbury Button Factory. For decades, the factory provided brass buttons for uniforms. It had been vacant for about 22 years.

Three firefighters suffered minor injuries including heat exhaustion. No one else was injured.

A few homes in the area were evacuated, but there was no damage to them. Officials said nobody is displaced by the fire.

A few neighbors who live close by said the scene was intense.

"This whole area was like smoked out. You couldn't see anything outside the window or nothing. I took a bunch of pictures and videos on my phone. I got like the whole Waterbury Company Building falling down," said Caroline Gutierrez, of Waterbury.

The state Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency are at the scene on Sunday to monitor the air and water quality due to the age of the building. The mayor said at this point, there are no alarming trends in air quality.

DEEP says it has also placed booms at all known outfall pipes to the Mad River and no chemical or petroleum products have been seen so far. They are also walking the area to search for signs of asbestos, however, officials said nothing has been found outside of the immediate area of the fire.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

O'Leary said before the fire, there was going to be an announcement in the coming weeks about the site and its future development. It includes an aggressive and robust remediation plan and future plans for economic development. It's unclear if those plans are still in place.