Terrain Hinders Firefighters
Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: RALPH GORDON
ASHFIELD, MA – A fire yesterday destroyed an old storage barn in deep woods off the intersection of Route 116 and Burton Hill Road here.
No one was injured in the 10 a.m. blaze, but officials, unsure of the cause of the blaze, have asked the state fire marshal’s office to investigate. The 36- by 45-foot-long, 1 1/2-story building had long gone unused and had no electric power.
The barn was once part of a pottery factory and had been used by automobile restorers working on old cars.
An old pick-up truck, roughly 1970s vintage, was destroyed along with a couple of old refrigerators, some mattresses, a stove, and some pieces of antique furniture stored there.
Current owner Edgar Arrowsmith of Southwick said the building, “was very old and very dry, and had no electricity whatever.”
He said he hadn’t been there in a couple of years, and except for storage purposes the building hadn’t been used in many years.
His family bought the property 40 to 50 years ago, he said. A building in front on Route 116, was once a large blacksmith shop, and the horses were stabled in the building that burned yesterday, Arrowsmith said.
He said he has not seen the building since the fire and could not estimate the value of the damage.
Fire Chief Douglas Field said it was difficult to reach the fire even though it was only 75 to 100 yards from the road. Firefighters, coming in from Burton Hill Road, had to descend a 15-20 foot embankment into a dry gulch, and go up the other side to reach the fire, he said.
And, from Route 116, roughly the same distance away, they had to descend a similarly large embankment and skirt an old stone foundation, once part of the Ashfield Pottery Works, according to Arrowsmith.
Deputy Chief William Burnett said the building was engulfed in flames when they got through the woods to the fire, and the metal roofing had already buckled and fallen off.
Ashfield Patrolman James Manheim, who was only a short distance away when the fire call was received, was the first to reach the scene. “It was just on one side at first and then took only a couple of minutes to engulf the entire building.”
Mary Cushman, who lives nearby, saw smoke and flames through the wooded area from the back window of her home, and said the building was fully engulfed when she first spotted it and called Franklin County Dispatch.
“No one’s used it in the five years we’ve lived here,” she said. “Though, we’ve seen kids playing around there.”
Burnett noted the old building had been unused long enough that the only drive into it, from the Route 116 side, was so overgrown with brush and small trees that the fire truck couldn’t drive through.
The area of the fire also has no hydrants or large supply of water. Field called for tankers from a half dozen other towns, with Franklin County Dispatch sending trucks from Conway, Buckland, Goshen, Plainfield Hawley and Deerfield to help with water supplies, with Charlemont covering the Ashfield station.
Field said, “water supplies, brooks in particular, are very, very low, everywhere. We were able to have Buckland pump out of South River a short distance down route 116, but that’s not really running heavy either.”