Dozens of firefighters spent hours battling a raging fire in an old factory building in downtown New Britain on Tuesday night and part of the roof and some stairwells have collapsed.
The building, located at 59 High St., was built in the 1800s. It is on the corner of High Street and Columbus Boulevard and High Street, Columbus Boulevard and several surrounding streets were closed.
The factory building houses Polar Corporation, a car repair shop and a European furniture stor, New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart said, and there are also many unoccupied floors.
Firefighters responded to the scene around 8 p.m. and found heavy fire on the second and third floors. They remained at the scene on Wednesday morning, putting out hotspots.
“There was fire coming for almost every window,” Valerye Quintana, of New Britain said. “The smoke was so crazy.”
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Officials said workers who were there when the fire started were not hurt and no injuries have been reported.
“We’re limited in our ability to actually access the building and overhaul and open up those spaces, so there were times we actually had to let those spaces burn out, burn open so we could get water into the voids,” New Britain’s Assistant Fire Chief Peter Towey said.
Mayor Stewart went up in a bucket truck and saw just how compromised the structure is.
“You can see the arches in the windows that are starting to break, you can see the mortar between the brick that is just missing in some places and that does a lot of damage for the building. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it has to come down,” she said.
The fire marshal will investigate the cause of the fire and how it started.
