200 Fountain St.’s fifth floor, on Tuesday. Credit: Thomas Breen photo One woman died and two others were injured following a fire in a fifth-floor apartment in Westville Monday night. That fire broke out at around 8:03 p.m. at 200 Fountain St., according to city Fire Chief Daniel Coughlin. Coughlin said city firefighters had the blaze under control within 45 minutes. Coughlin said that crews arrived to find “multiple people hanging out of windows” as a fire raged in a fifth-floor apartment at the 65-unit, six-story building. Coughlin said that firefighters were able to “successfully evacuate the entire building.” One person suffered an ankle injury, one suffered from smoke inhalation, and no firefighters were injured. “We had to force a lot of doors,” Coughlin said about firefighters’ response. He said that responding crews were able to contain the fire to just one fifth-floor apartment, which was “heavily damaged” by the blaze. He said that apartments on lower floors of the building also suffered “significant water damage” during firefighters’ response. Coughlin said that initial reports from American Medical Response (AMR) indicated that the as-yet-unidentified woman who died “may have jumped” from an upper-floor window. Coughlin said that he is not sure at this point if that is true, or if instead the elderly woman was walking nearby and collapsed. Coughlin said he is also not sure if the woman who died was a resident of the building. Asked about this on Tuesday, an AMR spokesperson told the Independent she is looking into the matter. (On Tuesday at 12:17 p.m., AMR spokesperson Brittany Murphy declined to answer any questions about the woman who died. “Due to federal patient privacy laws, we cannot confirm or deny whether we were involved in the care of a specific individual, nor can we discuss any information related to a patient’s care, treatment, condition, or transport.”) A city police spokesperson, meanwhile, directed the Independent to the state police for more information. A state police spokesperson confirmed that the Connecticut State Police Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit (FEIU) is assisting New Haven’s fire marshal in this investigation, and told the Independent to reach out to the fire marshal for more information. The fire marshal’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article. The 200 Fountain St. apartment building has been owned since November 2024 by an affiliate of the Lakewood, N.J.-based company Cue Residential. A representative from Cue Residential did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article. Click here to read about a first-floor fire at this same building in August 2021. Fire Breaks Out In Lab With “Dozens Of Caged Mice” Coughlin said that the 200 Fountain St. fire was one of two “high-rise fires” that the city’s fire department responded to on Monday. The first took place in a lab on the second floor of the nine-story building at 300 George St. downtown. Coughlin said that that fire began in a “large mechanical area” of the lab, and that firefighters were able to bring the fire under control quickly. He said no one was hurt in that fire. He also said that in the lab that caught fire were “literally dozens and dozens of caged mice.” It was “a little bit of a shock” for firefighters when they arrived and found all those mice present. He said that the mice were “still in their cages” and none appeared to be hurt by the fire. That 300 George St. fire came in at around 6:04 p.m., Coughlin said. Firefighters had it under control by 6:49 pm.m. The post 1 Dead After Fountain Apartment Fire appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less