Antrim Fire Department summoned after overloaded socket fills basement with smoke

A freezer plugged into an overloaded socket filled a High Street basement with smoke on Monday night, Fire Chief Marshall Gale said.

The Fire Department was summoned to 10 High St. at 10:27 p.m. for a possible fire in the basement of the house, Gale said. First responders used a thermal imager to reveal the source of the heavy smoke.

“We found a power tap that a freezer had been plugged into,” he said, which got overloaded and started to burn. “There should never have been a freezer plugged into it,” he said. The crew shut the circuit breaker off, evacuated the smoke, and metered the residence above for carbon monoxide levels.

“It certainly seems like we’re having our little run of fires,” Gale said, after two two-alarm fires in town since the end of April. He said he was glad this call turned out to be less serious, and hoped the town would get a break for a while.

— By ABBE HAMILTON