Fire Supression System Saves Facility Targeted By Arsonist

Water--not smoke--signaled trouble at a home for pregnant women in crisis in downtown Orange on Monday morning. There was so much water on Caroline Street that a passerby suspected a water main break and alerted the town. Workers instead discovered water pouring from beneath the front doors of the former President Madison Inn, which is being transformed into a 30-room maternity home by the Paul Stefan Foundation and was set to open by year’s end. The nonprofit’s administrative assistant, Barbara Harris, lives on a nearby property and was the first to step inside. She knew as soon as she inhaled the acrid air that there had been a fire.