Responders from about 10 regional agencies spent part of Wednesday and most of today battling a brush fire as large as 189 acres in the northern Berkshires.A helicopter from Barnes Air National Guard base in Westfield made multiple runs over Clarksburg State Forest for more than two hours Thursday morning and afternoon. Each trip, the aircraft dumped 500 gallons of water from Mt. Williams Reservoir onto burning areas within the forest. Some 70 people from municipal fire agencies and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation battled the fire on the ground. Paul Ethier is chief of Stamford, Vermont’s volunteer fire department, which responded with 10 firefighters.
“All we had was hand tools,” Ethier said. “We did have one backpack water pump. We pulled the ground cover that wasn’t burned away from the edge of the burned area to prevent it from cutting across. We would take a couple swipes with each tool, pull the fuel away and it essentially stops the source of fuel, which puts the fire out.”
Four and a half miles of the Appalachian Trail runs through the 3,000-acre Clarksburg State Forest leading into Vermont. The area is mostly undisturbed forest popular with hikers and hunters. Overnight camping is allowed within a designated area.
An additional 15 people set up a staging area about 4,000 feet downhill from the fire’s perimeter. Because of limited road access, vehicles were only able to get firefighters within a one-hour hike of the fire, which most got to around 6:30 Thursday morning.
“The hour hike in was pretty brutal,” Ethier said. “The terrain is very steep, rocky and unstable. All there is a basic foot path, the Appalachian Trail, that you can walk on. Then once you got off the Appalachian Trail it was essentially walking through brush, trees and make your own trail type of situation.”
Using portable pumps and water backpacks that hold about five gallons the firefighters drew water from a nearby stream to douse the fire. A hiker on the Appalachian Trail reported the fire around 2 p.m. Wednesday, according to Massachusetts forest fire control district warden Margaret Carnevale. At one time flames reached three feet high, according to incident commander and Clarksburg Volunteer Fire Chief Chip Chesbro.
“It was a quick moving surface fire,” Chesbro said. “It didn’t get into the ground. It just moved along mostly burning leaves. A few trees and stumps went up.”
Firefighters responded around 4 p.m. Wednesday, but were pulled out overnight for safety. By 2 p.m. Thursday all of the firefighters were coming out of the forest. Remaining in contact with the Air National Guard — which continued to drench the area — DCR will continue to monitor. With no injuries reported, incident commander Chesbro says all the agencies worked well together.
“The state police are investigating how it started,” Chesbro said. “Pretty much we’re comfortable at this time saying it started with a campfire. But, we are still investigating so it’s still open. That will probably be closed within a few days. We have a really good idea of what happened.”
Chesbro says other people were in the woods when the fire was reported. For most of Wednesday and Thursday it was believed to be a 20- to 40-acre brush fire, but after people on the ground were able to set up GPS coordinates the area totaled 189 acres. Chief Ethier says within a couple of hours of getting to the fire Thursday morning, they had it largely under control.
“Essentially this is the largest one we’ve had in the area for quite some time,” said Ethier.
