Source: Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: GEORGE GRAHAM
NORTHAMPTON, MA – Capricious winds fanned a brush fire near the upper portion of Sylvester Road into a 100-acre conflagration yesterday that took more than 40 area firefighters most of the day to extinguish, according to a fire department spokesman.
No injuries were reported in the blaze, the city’s largest brush fire to date this year, according to Deputy Fire Chief David Favaro.
The cause of the fire has been termed suspicious and is still under investigation, he said.
Firefighting efforts were hampered by the rugged terrain of the remote area, and firefighters had to carry in more than 2,000 feet of hose to get to the blaze, located between Sylvester and Chesterfield roads, Favaro said.
The fire was called in to the department at 8:25 a.m. by a Williamsburg resident who reported the odor of smoke, according to fire officials.
Favaro said the initial brush fire, fueled by several inches of last year’s dead leaves, had been confined to about 10 acres before the winds picked up as a storm front moved through the area later in the morning.
“The storm front took the fire and just fanned it. That kind of wind does strange things to a fire on a hillside, and we had to get out of the way,” said Favaro. “Two or three inches of dead leaves can be worse than tissue paper.”
Firefighters from Williamsburg, Goshen, Hatfield, Westhampton and the state Department of Environmental Management’s Bureau of Fire Control, which is based at the DAR state park in Goshen, fought the blaze.
The fire was extinguished by 5:30 p.m. yesterday, said the deputy chief.
Favaro theorized the fire had been smoldering all night before taking off the next morning.
Favaro said a smaller brush fire, several hundred yards away from yesterday’s fire, had been extinguished by the fire department Wednesday. According to Favaro, Northampton typically experiences similarly sized brush fires once every one or two years.