Gasoline on a Halogen Light Started New London Storage Fire, Officials Say

NEW LONDON, Conn.

NEW LONDON, Conn. — A gasoline spill onto a hot halogen work light started a single-alarm fire at a commercial storage building at 10 Walker Street that consumed two occupied storage units and spread into the shared attic of the eleven-unit complex, according to FOX 61 Connecticut.

All on-duty city companies and mutual aid resources responded before the fire was brought under control. No injuries were reported. The building's roof assembly is compromised, utilities have been shut down across the remaining storage lockers, and a physical watch presence is now in place to secure tenant property and monitor for hot spots.

The fire is being described as accidental, and the mechanism is one of the most common in commercial and industrial occupancies: a flammable liquid released near an ignition source that nobody classified as an ignition source.

How a spill becomes a structure fire

Halogen work lights are the fixture most often involved in this class of incident, and the reason is physical rather than incidental.

A 500-watt halogen lamp operates with a filament at roughly 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit and a quartz envelope that reaches surface temperatures well above 700 degrees Fahrenheit. That envelope will ignite paper, cardboard, and the ordinary contents of a storage unit on contact, and it will vaporize a flammable liquid pooled beneath it without any flame ever touching the liquid.

Gasoline complicates the outcome because its flash point is around minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit. At any normal indoor temperature, gasoline is already releasing vapor in the flammable range, and the vapor is heavier than air, so it collects in low areas and travels along the floor away from the spill. A vapor cloud that reaches a hot surface ignites and then flashes back to the liquid source, which is the sequence that turns a spill of a few gallons into a fire involving everything in the unit.

The storage occupancy makes both problems worse. Storage units concentrate combustible loading, they are often served by a single shared attic or roof void with no draft stopping between units, and they are frequently accessed by people who are storing materials they would not keep in an occupied building.

Why the attic fire matters more than the units

Two units burned, but the fire that put the building at risk was in the roof space.

An eleven-unit storage building is typically a single structure with a common attic or a continuous roof void over the unit demising walls. Once fire enters that void, the demising walls stop being barriers — they end at the underside of the roof sheathing. Fire in a common attic spreads horizontally along the roof structure and can involve the entire building's roof assembly while the units below remain intact.

That is the reason a fire in two units required every on-duty company plus mutual aid, and the reason the roof is now structurally compromised across more of the building than the burned units. Roof sheathing and trusses that have been charred or heated lose capacity, and a roof that sags over one bay is a collapse hazard for anyone working below it.

The utilities shutdown across the remaining lockers is the second consequence. When a building's electrical service is isolated, the lighting, ventilation, and any fire detection in the surviving section go with it. Tenants with property in those lockers have no way to protect it, and the owner has no way to monitor the building without a person on site.

Fire watch and the security problem in a storage building

A storage building is the hardest occupancy to secure after a fire and the easiest to enter. There are no residents to notice a stranger, the units are opaque, and the access hardware on most units is a padlock or an overhead door that a person with a bolt cutter can defeat in under a minute.

The post that follows a fire in this occupancy normally does three things. It controls the single point of entry and holds the tenant and contractor access list, since an owner who allows self-service access to a burned building is an owner who cannot say later what was taken from which unit. It walks the building on a documented interval, with attention to the attic line and the roof where re-ignition is most likely, and it records the condition of the tarps and barricades that are keeping weather out of the open roof.

It also manages the notification chain. In a building with the power off and no detection, the watch officer is the detection system, and the value of the post depends entirely on whether the person on it knows who to call and what to report.

USPA's New London industrial security coverage and its waterfront assignments at the Port of New London both support posts of this type, and the Connecticut shoreline market has additional fire watch capacity through the Stamford fire watch team when a property needs coverage beyond the immediate area.

The regulatory picture in Connecticut

Connecticut enforces its own fire safety code, which is derived from the International Fire Code and administered locally by the municipal fire marshal. New London's fire marshal is the authority having jurisdiction for 10 Walker Street.

Three provisions in that framework apply to the building as it stands. The code requires an approved fire watch when a required fire protection system is out of service, which is the situation for a building whose electrical service has been disconnected and whose detection is therefore dead. It gives the code official authority over unsafe structures, including the power to order a building secured or vacated. And it regulates the storage of flammable liquids in quantities far below what most tenants assume, which is where the gasoline that started this fire would have been addressed if anyone had inspected it.

The occupational safety side belongs to OSHA rather than the fire code. The hot work and flammable liquid provisions at 29 CFR 1926.352 and 1910.106 control ignition sources near flammable liquids on a jobsite, and they exist because spills like this one are a foreseeable part of construction and maintenance work. A halogen light set on a floor within reach of a fuel spill is the condition those provisions are written to prevent.

What tenants and owners face now

For the owner, the sequence is uncomplicated but expensive: secure the building, document the condition of every unit for the insurance claim, notify tenants in writing of the access arrangements, and hold the site until the roof is either repaired or removed. The units that survived the fire but lost power present a specific problem, because the property is now responsible for contents it cannot see and cannot protect without a physical presence.

For the two tenants who lost units, the record of what was stored where becomes the substance of a claim, and the property's access log is part of that record. That is another reason the post is documented from the first hour rather than from the first business day.

Coverage

Commercial property owners in southeastern Connecticut holding a fire-damaged building, an impaired alarm system, or an unsecured site can request fire watch and site security coverage through USPA Nationwide Security. Posts are staffed with fire watch–trained personnel and documented to the standard the local fire marshal accepts.

Coordination is available at (800) 214-1448.

The Watchline will update this article when the New London fire marshal issues a determination on the roof and occupancy, or when the property announces a repair or demolition schedule.

Overhaul on a compromised roof

The phase of this incident that will last longest is overhaul, and it is the phase that determines whether the building is repairable.

Overhaul is the work of opening concealed spaces to confirm the fire is out: pulling ceiling, opening wall cavities, and in this case ventilating the attic line above the eleven units. On a roof that has already lost sheathing and truss section, that work has to be done from below or from a platform, and it is slow.

The practical consequence for the owner is a building that stays open to weather for as long as the roof remains unrepaired. Water damage to the ten units that did not burn is the most likely source of a secondary loss, and a tarped roof is a temporary measure that fails in the first sustained wind.

That is one more reason the post at this property has to be more than a guard at a door. Someone has to walk the roof line after weather, report the condition of the covering, and document it. The record that results is what supports a claim for the units that survived the fire but not the aftermath.

Why storage occupancies keep producing these fires

Storage units concentrate the two things that make a fire grow: fuel load and ignorance of that fuel load. A tenant who stores a generator, a can of gasoline, and a propane cylinder in a unit has created a hazard the property has no way to inspect, and the lease that prohibits those materials is enforced by nobody in most facilities.

Facilities that reduce the exposure do it with three measures: a prohibition that is stated at the point of rental and posted on the unit doors, periodic inspection rights written into the lease and exercised, and a hot work permit system for anyone working inside the building with a torch, grinder, or light of the type that started this fire. The last of those is the one most often missing, and the one that costs least to put in place.