A fire broke out in a house at 62 Hunter Ridge Road on Jan. 28, 2008, making the colonial uninhabitable for the family that was living there. Since then, the property has become a nuisance to neighbors.
On Monday morning, nearly four years later, construction workers from T.M.K. Co. LLC of Shelton demolished the house. The company is owned by Tom Bartomeli.
First Selectman Steve Vavrek and the Town Council had worked on the neighbors' behalf, but Town Attorney Jack Fracassini had to navigate through legal red tape before Monroe could get permission to take down the structure.
The crew had been out since 8 a.m. and Fracassini and a Monroe police officer stood among a small crowd on the cul-de-sac, looking up toward the property.
It was around 1 p.m. when the Patch video was shot. By that time, the house had already been demolished and a backhoe was being used to fill a Dumpster with debris.
Fracassini said the front of the house on the driveway side was knocked down into the basement first and packed down, so the backhoe could drive over it to the other side. The pool in the back had yet to be taken out and backfill had to be hauled in. He said the entire clean up would take about four days.
"They already cleaned up the front," Fracassini said.
