Fires devastate three homes

(WTNH) -- It was a busy morning for firefighters as flames broke out in three towns.

Folks in a New Britain apartment on Sexton Street first noticed something was wrong around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday night. Luis Ayala said he thought the flickering light outside his window were hazard lights on a car.

"And then I came outside to look and the second floor porch was on fire," he said. "I came back inside, grabbed all my kids and we ran out."

All his kids, and everybody from five different families all got out safely, but their homes were badly damaged. Investigators are focused on that back porch area.

A couple hours later came the second fire of the morning . This one was in Portland at 25 Breezy Corners Road.

Firefighters weren't worried about what they could see, but rather what they were hearing.

"There was aerosol cans in the garage and there was a lot of popping from them cans," said Portland's Deputy Fire Chief James Lynch.

At first, they were worried that popping might be ammunition exploding, so they kept everyone well away from the house.

No one was hurt, but no fire hydrants made it one tough fire to fight. The cause is also under investigation.

The house, which is back in the woods, is a complete loss, despite help from departments in many nearby towns, including Middletown.

Just as the Middletown firefighters got back from helping in Portland reports came in of a ten unit apartment building on fire on Route 66. The fire started in a dumpster out back and quickly jumped to the building.

"When you get an old building like this, you tend to chase it around. Fire travels through the walls with limited fire stops and by the time we got it, it made it all the way to the roof," said Middletown's Deputy Fire Chief Robert Kronenberger.

Firefighters spent more than an hour sawing through the roof chasing those flames. Again, no one was hurt, but those ten apartments are badly damaged.

"So everybody's going to be displaced, probably for quite a while," Kronenberger said. "The structure suffered major fire damage, water damage and smoke damage."

Technically the cause is also under investigation, but the chief says you can almost never tell exactly what started a fire in a dumpster.