July 18--BRIDGEPORT -- City firefighters spent hours Wednesday night beating back a persistent fire nestled deep in a building they have become familiar with over the years.
The last engine company left the scene at 1 a.m. Thursday, after a nearly seven-hour battle. The fire marshal will attempt to locate the building's owner and if he can't, Assistant Fire Chief Richard Thode said, city building officials will secure it to precent anyone from getting inside again.
"We've had fires in this building before," Thode said of the former AGI Rubber Co., the first structure on Stratford Avenue east of Bridgeport Harbor.
"There was a pretty major fire there about two years ago and we had a small rubbish fire," the assistant chief said.
The building's history precluded city firefighters from heading inside the fire-gutted structure to attack the "deep-seated" blaze Wednesday.
"It's way too dangerous to send guys in," Thode said.
Instead, crews attacked the fire from all angles outside the building, moving around deck guns -- hoses set on the ground spraying up at the building -- and multiple ladder-truck hoses, while still more firefighters worked on the building's roof.
No firefighters were injured at the scene, Thode said.
Because of the time-consuming task of dousing innumerable "hot spots" within the building, crews were rotated on and off the fire as the night progressed, he said.
There also was a rotation of spectators -- East Side residents heading in and out of downtown by foot or bicycle.
As fire crews switched between manning hoses and splashing water on their faces, new waves of spectators stopped to lean on the railing of the Stratford Avenue bridge, feel the breeze coming off Bridgeport Harbor and watch the fire burn.
Alexander Fernandez's trek downtown brought him to Stratford Avenue in time for the first big act, as the flames and firehoses tore away a chunk of the building's facade to reveal smoldering debris.
"The whole wall came down," the 37-year-old Bridgeport man said.
But as the pink and blue of dusk framed a truck carrying lighting equipment to the scene, there was little more to see than smoke and spent firefighters.
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