On Oct. 23, firefighters from multiple Norwich departments were called to a massive house fire on Bentley Avenue, a scene of controlled chaos with mutual aid back-up staged just down the road from the blaze as city trucks sprayed the multi-family residence with streams of water.
Norwich Fire Department Acting Chief Keith Wucik, as incident commander, had a lot of balls in the air that afternoon between directing the main firefighting effort to keeping track of how many members had arrived on scene from the city’s volunteer departments. To make the situation even more challenging, the body of a resident was found in the smoldering home.
In an effort to better coordinate resources at mutual aid fires and to ultimately ensure firefighter safety, Wucik recently began pushing to implement a city-wide identification system, an idea first floated by former Norwich Fire Chief Kenneth Scandariato years ago.