If you were listening to the fire horn in Verona on Sunday night, you may have heard an unusual combination: 2-2-2-2. It’s a pattern of emergency horns that tells Verona’s volunteer firefighters that their help is needed in a neighboring town and they need to report to our two stations for their assignments.
The VFD’s members were among the scores from across western Essex County who were called to Essex Fells for a massive house fire. This kind of multi-department response is coordinated thru the Essex County Fire Mutual Aid System.
The VFD was at the Devon Road home for about five hours, assisting Essex Fells as a Rapid Intervention Team, which means that they were assigned the task of rescuing any missing or injured firefighters. They also worked on extinguishing hot spots, and they returned on Monday morning with the ladder truck to assist reaching some small, hard to reach pockets of fire that were re-igniting.
Fire photos courtesy Tina Caridad.
