KENT — Years of training came into play Friday, March 21 when, in a chaotic few hours, first responders from across the state all converged on KenMont and KenWood Camps where a fire was greedily consuming two camp buildings.
Responding to the scene were 12 fire departments, fire marshals, state police, the DEEP Forestry Protection division, Eversource, the Litchfield County Fire Coordinator, the Region 5 Rehab Unit from Danbury, the Kent Volunteer Fire Department Auxiliary and the Salvation Army Food Truck
In addition to the units responding to the scene, additional mutual aid departments moved into the vacated fire departments’ headquarters, providing protection for towns whose trucks had gone to Kent.
All of these separate entities melded together in one mass effort to stop the fire before it could destroy even more property or escape into the forest. Controlling the scene and directing individual units’ duties was incident commander Wendell Soule of the Kent Volunteer Fire Department.
“We divide up operations with the chief, a water supply officer and a staging officer,” Kent Fire Chief Alan Gawal explained. “When the first officer arrives, they size up the situation and as higher-ranking officers come in, they decide if they need a second alarm or third alarm. Calling additional companies is based on different factors, including the location and what the water sources are.”
In this instance, pumper trucks pulled water from a nearby lake, conveying it to the fire scene.
The alarm was sounded at 10:05 a.m., according to Gawal. “The first Kent officer was on the scene at 10:12,” he said. “By 11:57, the fire was declared under control.” And by 2 p.m., firefighters were leaving the scene.
Gawel said two 60-foot-by-20-foot camp cabins were fully engulfed in flames at the time the firefighters arrived and that there were “multiple exposures to fire” for 10 other cabins.
Whipping winds of up to 30 mph complicated efforts to control the fire and eventually a third cabin succumbed to the blaze.
The cabins at the camp are heated by propane and Gawel said four of the tanks caught fire with one suffering a BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion). “Shrapnel went into the air when the top blew apart like a bomb,” Gawel said.
Crews were able to shut off the other tanks and Eversource killed the power to electric lines to prevent more explosions.
A blown propane tank sits among ash and debris at the scene of the fire in Kent March 21.Provided
According to a statement released by the camp, an electrician working in an unused staff cabin inadvertently sparked the blaze. The camp, located at 65 Kenmont Rd., offers co-ed programs for kids aged 7 to 15 during the summer.
Following the incident, camp owner Brad Lerman said, “We at KenMont KenWood Camps are incredibly grateful for the quick response of the many local fire companies and the many other emergency personnel who quickly responded to this morning’s limited structure fire.”
Gawel added his own note of appreciation to all the other organizations that contributed to the day’s success.
Two Kent firefighters were injured at the scene and received treatment in the hospital.
“One was released, and the other was admitted,” Gawel said, adding that firefighters were waiting for word about the hospitalized firefighter’s condition.
“He is a long-time Kent resident,” the chief said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with that firefighter and his family. We volunteer to do this job, but sometimes I think people don’t realize that it is dangerous.”
He asked residents to send their best wishes to the injured firefighters via the company’s Facebook page. HIPAA regulations prevent releasing identities.
The firefighters left the scene around 2 p.m., but their day was far from over. As that scene was winding down, an accident scene was developing. Route 7 was shut down at 1:30 p.m. at the junction of routes 7 and 341 while emergency crews worked to free a motorist whose car had become entangled in electrical wires brought down by a felled tree.
Eversource was at the scene by 1:52 p.m. and the wires were removed from the car by 1:58 p.m. First responders left the scene 15 minutes later, the motorist having refused hospital transport, and the investigation was turned over to the State Police. Route 7 was reopened.
At 2:31 p.m., Kent Engine 1 reported a possible illegal burn on Schaghticoke Road and asked Litchfield County Dispatch to notify the Connecticut State Police. Shortly thereafter, Kent Engine 2 responded to Schaghticoke Road, but by 2:51 p.m. both trucks responded to Jennings Road where another tree was reported down across the entire road.
A fifth alarm dispatched to Kent School for an automatic alarm in the chapel.
Kathryn Boughton is the editor of Kent Dispatch.
Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens at home in front of one of Plagens’s paintings.
“He was doing critiques with everyone,” Fendrich said of Plagens. “We met at one of those sessions and, well, what can I say. We fell in love instantly.”
Fendrich speaks candidly about the pressures that shaped her early life choices. “We both married the first time at 21, which a good number of women of my generation did without much thought.” Her first husband was a good guy, she says, but “we weren’t suited for each other at all, even though he suited my parents perfectly.” Her decision to get a divorce was seismic. “My mother didn’t speak to me for a year.” Time softened the rupture. “One day she told me, ‘I see now why you left.’”
Fendrich had a rigorous liberal arts education at Mount Holyoke. “I studied painting and drawing, but I also got interested in political philosophy. Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli — Rousseau was my big guy — Tocqueville, everybody. And I still read them.” Plagens’s path was less formal. “I went to USC at 17,” he said, “and declared English as my major. It was a frat school, and I was in one for the first two years. Then I started doing the cartoons for the Daily Trojan, took a couple art classes, and thought, ‘Wait a minute, I like this.’”
Culturally, they diverged just as sharply. “I came from a fairly puritanical family that didn’t even go to the movies,” Fendrich said. Plagens, by contrast, grew up immersed in pop culture. “My father was an omnivorous reader,” he said, “and a jazz fan, and he shared these passions with me.” In 1966, Plagens walked into Artforum’s LA office and said, “I want to write reviews.” He was paid five dollars per piece. “Gasoline was 23 cents a gallon, so it went a long way.”
Over time, the couple slowly fused their educations. “He taught me jazz, I taught him Mozart,” Fendrich said with a laugh. “I’ve had a movie education from him; he read Jane Austen because of me.”
Plagens and Fendrich at home in front of some of Fendrich’s paintings. Natalia Zukerman
During their early years in LA, Plagens taught at USC, and Fendrich at Art Center College of Design. In 1985, they decided “our kind of abstraction would do better in New York,” as Fendrich put it. “So, we up and moved to Tribeca with $10,000 and a toddler.”
Both artists grounded their artistic careers in teaching and writing. “Teaching, which I loved, gave me the financial stability to be an artist,” Fendrich said, reflecting on her 27 years as a professor at Hofstra. “It meant that being an artist didn’t require I make money from every show. I didn’t start writing until 1999, but though I write for publication frequently, I make hardly any money at it.”
Artistically, they guard each other’s independence. “We have unspoken rules,” Plagens said. “You don’t comment on someone’s work while they’re in the middle of creating it.” Critique comes by invitation only. “He’s not mean, just direct,” said Fendrich. Over time, their aesthetics have subtly converged. “My work has gotten cleaner from looking at his,” she said. “He’s gotten more colorful because of me.”
The two have had several two-person exhibitions. At a recent duo show at the Texas Gallery in Houston “Laurie’s paintings flew off the wall,” Plagens recalled. “Me, well, not so much.”
Plagens’s parallel career in journalism shaped their lives in tangible ways. He worked as art critic at Newsweek from 1989 until 2003 and currently contributes reviews of museum exhibitions to The Wall Street Journal. “Being at Newsweek was one of the luckiest breaks I ever had,” he said. “They paid me to see things I would gladly pay to see.”
Their creative processes mirror their personalities. “I start with a specific idea,” Fendrich said, “and then modify things as I paint.” Plagens laughed. “I start with complete mush, just blurting it out and spending the rest of the time fixing it.”
In 2019, they made what Fendrich calls “a decision of contraction.” They left the TriBeCa loft they had lived in for three decades, sold their Catskills home with its large studio, and moved full-time to a former auto repair shop in Lakeville, now a house where each has a studio, and the ground floor retains the open feel of a loft.
What sustains them in life, art and love, decades in, are endless conversations — and arguments — about art, history, exhibitions, books and movies. That exchange, ongoing and rigorous, may just be the masterpiece of their shared life.
