Fire Burns Unit In Country Glen Luxury Apartments

A fire Wednesday night at the Country Glen Luxury Apartments destroyed one apartment but spared the other 11 units in the same building. No one was injured.

“Everything in the apartment is black,” said Todd Paige, chief of the Poquonnock Bridge Fire Department. “It was like an oven. It just baked everything in there.”

The fire started in Building 14, Unit 1408, the second floor of a rear apartment, and may have started long before the tenant got home, Paige said.

A call came in about a fire at the apartment complex on Meridian Street Extension shortly after 6 p.m. Police arrived just ahead of the fire department and evacuated the building. 

Firefighters opened the apartment door to find heavy smoke and heat, and a small amount of fire, Paige said.

Some of the tenants were not home yet.

 “It was one of those scary things; coming home and finding all these fire trucks in front (of your house),” Paige said.

Lorraine Domijan takes care of a man with a traumatic brain injury who lives on the first floor of Building 14. She said she was finishing dinner and putting dishes away when the man whose apartment was burning banged on the door.

“He said, ‘Fire, fire, you’ve got to get out,’” she said. She smelled no smoke, but the banging was urgent.

 “The boy did bang extra loud so there was no mistake,” she said.

The fire was under control within minutes and out in a half hour.

“These responders were so fast,” she said of the fire department. “They and the police. Where would we be without them?”

Building 14 in County Glen is three stories and has four apartments on each floor.

The fire marshal is investigating the cause of the blaze, Paige said. In addition to Poquonnock Bridge, firefighters from departments including Groton City, the Submarine Base Fire Department and Mystic, plus ambulance companies from Groton and Mystic responded to the scene.