Precipitation over the last few days helped slow and contain the Butternut Fire on East Mountain in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
But on Monday, a week after the fire was first reported, officials are still asking residents to use caution and take steps to prevent fires as drought conditions persist.
To get an update on the wildfire, WAMC's Lucas spoke with Great Barrington Fire Department Lieutenant Brian Mead.
So, the latest count that we put out was 1,388 that was a couple days ago, acres. That is not necessarily growth, that is just more accurate measuring. So, we want to be very clear that the fire has not grown. It's again, we're just getting more accurate measurements, and we're still working on getting even more detailed measurements. One thing that I do want to say is that the an acre is not that much land, and this perimeter of this fire is about three miles. So, if there's an adjustment of just a few feet on a perimeter line, that quickly adds up to add significant acreage. As of right now, we have crews from DCR, they're working to reinforce the lines, and again, we're just kind of monitoring and reporting and letting nature take its course.
Could you give me a sense of how the precipitation over the last few days helped slow the fire?
Absolutely, the precipitation, the rain that we did receive, was not enough to extinguish the fire. It did slow things down significantly, allowing us to get our fire breaks in place, and then from there, we were able to get a better control on the fire and limit its spread.
If I'm up there on the mountain, on East Mountain, and I'm looking at the fire, what can I expect to see? Is there still a lot of smoldering? Is there a lot of smoke? What does it look like up there right now?
Right now there's really not too much to see with the winds that we had over the last couple days, that kind of kicked up things a little bit. So it exposed some underground or under-leaves burning, and you had the occasional flare up where you might have seen flames for a couple minutes, or a little wisp of smoke here and there, but then it quickly went away. It's there's really not too awful much to look at. There's some trees that are still burning, or they're very rickety and tend to fall down. And when they do fall, they kind of crash a little bit and expose some embers. But since it's all in the contained area, we're just again, monitoring and reporting and not very concerned about it.
What is the status of the investigation into the cause of the fire? And I understand that the fire department does believe it to be of human origin.
We believe that it's of human origin, because 98% of fires, forest fires, are caused by human, from a human actions. We do not have any confirmation on that, though. As far as the investigation is going, our priority is focusing on the safety of the firefighters and containment of the fire. Any investigation is being done by the Great Barrington police that we're not aware of.
Now, with conditions still being rather dry. I understand we did get some precipitation over the last few days, but is there still an increased risk of fires, not just in Great Barrington, but throughout the southern Berkshires or Western Massachusetts?
Absolutely, things are unprecedentedly dry. Great Barrington has a fire ban in place until further notice. Other area communities I believe, are going week by week. I do not know their status right now, but any outdoor fires should not happen. It's just it's too dangerous right now.
Are you asking any town residents to take steps to prevent fires right now?
Absolutely. So the most important thing to do is just have common sense. Just be smart about things. Don't start a fire outside. If you have smoking paraphernalia, extinguish it properly in sand and water. Do not just flick a cigarette out the window as you're driving down the road. If you empty ashes from your fireplace, make sure they're in a metal container and stored on pavement or concrete outside of your home. Again, just no campfires, no burn barrels, no cooking fires. Just have to really use common sense and be smart and expect the worst could happen,
And then just looking ahead, maybe throughout this week, are there regular patrols underway? What can folks expect to see, maybe with crews going up onto the mountain?
So right now, we have state and local resources reinforcing the perimeter, patrolling, mapping, keeping an eye out. And then when it gets dark, we have crews on the ground that are from a distance, observing, looking for any flare ups or anything. It also patrols at night. It's really scaled down. Everything is scaled down right now. There's not too much to see right now.
