Business in Bridgeport fire stored chemicals

BY FRANK JULIANO
Hearst Connecticut Media

The owner of a company destroyed in a Thursday night fire on Seaview Avenue in Bridgeport said in an interview there were “small quantities of potentially hazardous chemicals” stored there.

But Carl Westhella, owner of the Rowayton Trading Co., said the barrels that exploded into fireballs during the five-alarm blaze contained fragrance oil, the main ingredient in perfume.

“It”™s not perfume, but it is the main ingredient,” Westhella said. “What happened was the concentrated fragrance oils got heated to a certain level and the top of the barrels popped off.”

A materials data sheet on the company website lists 1.3 butylene glycol and trichlorocarbon; both are common ingredients in cosmetics.

Westhella said the building in the 2100 block of Seaview Avenue held most of the 28-year-old company”™s inventory. “It will affect our business because orders to current customers can”™t go out now,” he said.

“I haven”™t been down there to see what”™s left and can be salvaged,” Westhella said. “The impact to us remains to be seen. We have insurance and will file a claim.”

Staff from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection installed air quality monitors in the area and detected no risk to public health.

State DEEP and U.S. Coast Guard officials are testing water samples from the Pequonnock River and Bridgeport Harbor to determine if water run-off from firefighting efforts carried any hazards into the waterway.

A foamy substance with a red tint was observed in the water, and all commercial fishing has been halted between Norwalk and Milford.

The other company, JWC Roofing Supply on Grant Street, behind the Rowayton Trading Co., was also destroyed, said William Kaempffer, spokesman for the Bridgeport Fire Department.

A man answering the phone at the company”™s business office Friday morning declined to comment or to put another employee on the phone.

According to its website, the company supplies roofing shingles and other building supplies to contractors.

Visit ctpost.com for updated coverage on the fire.

Hearst Connecticut Media includes four daily newspapers: Connecticut Post, Greenwich Time, The Advocate (Stamford) and The News Times (Danbury.) See ctpost.com for more from this reporter.