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Firefighters rapidly stop house fire

JULIE LANE PHOTO Shelter Island Firefighters kept what could have become a serious blaze in check Tuesday morning after what initially looked like a brush fire turned out to be an electrical fire.
JULIE LANE PHOTO
Shelter Island Firefighters kept what could have become a serious blaze in check Tuesday morning after what initially looked like a brush fire turned out to be an electrical fire.

For the second time in less than a week, Shelter Island Firefighters responded to an early morning fire, but this time it was a smaller situation than they had faced assisting at the Sag Harbor blaze last Friday.
The call came in for a brush fire at 8:55 a.m. Tuesday, according to Chief Greg Sulahian. About 15 firefighters and four trucks rushed to a house located directly behind the garages adjacent to Elli’s Country Store on South Ferry Road. They rapidly discovered that while brush was burning, it wasn’t the source of the fire, he said.

It was an electrical fire inside the small house that was unoccupied at the time,  rented to a single tenant.

It took firefighters about a half hour to tear down parts of the southern side of the building to get to the source of the fire and get hoses inside.

From the outside, there were wisps of smoke, but they quickly dissipated in the air.

Firefighters used an ax, a power saw and other tools to pry loose the siding from where the smoke emanated.

Just after 9:30 a.m. the scene was secured and safe.

“Just what I needed was to start another day smelling like smoke,” First Assistant Chief Anthony Reiter joked. He had led the Shelter Island crew that responded to the mutual aid call from Sag Harbor last Friday where Shelter Island firefighters were credited with keeping that blaze from spreading farther in cold and windy weather.

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