In Braintree, firefighters cut holes in wrong house
Training property was 2 blocks away
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff | July 18, 2007
BRAINTREE -- Town firefighters learned a different kind of lesson when they punched holes in a house as part of a training exercise: Make sure you have the right address.
And now the owners of the house they damaged want the Fire Department to pay up.
"They made the mistake," said Clayton Luu, whose family had lived in the four-bedroom white Victorian since the 1980s until an electrical fire last year heavily damaged it. "They will have to pay for it."
Department officials said yesterday that the error is the subject of an internal investigation.
Firefighters who arrived at the Luu house on Harrison Avenue Monday morning were instead supposed to be two blocks away on Coolidge Avenue, where Jim Doherty was having his white raised bungalow razed.
