By Meghan Foley
Posted: 04/27/2009 02:10:54 AM EDT
North Adams Transcript
FLORIDA -- Firefighters and forest wardens from towns across Northern Berkshire and Southern Vermont battled a brush fire Saturday afternoon off Central Shaft Road.
The fire was reported around noon and burned for about three hours torching multiple acres in the area of Busby Trail in Savoy Mountain State Forest.
"We probably had about 70 people up in the woods knocking down 10 acres, which is a big fire," Florida Fire Chief Mike Bedini said Sunday.
He said amazingly there were no injuries.
Fire and forest warden departments from Florida, Savoy, Williamstown, Clarksburg, Lanesborough, Cheshire and Pownal, Vt. were called throughout the afternoon to help extinguish the fire, and the state sent four people from the Department of Conservation and Recreation to assist, Bedini said.
He said a county coordinator was on the scene, as well as about a half dozen town residents who volunteered their all-terrain vehicles to get firefighters into the woods.
In addition, North Adams Ambulance Service provided water and medical personnel.
"If we didn’t have the manpower we did yesterday (Saturday), the fire would probably still be burning into today," Bedini said.
He said he and Mike Gleason, captain of the Florida Volunteer Fire Department, were listening to the radio around noon when they heard a report that someone at one of the state’s fire towers spotted a fire in the area of Busby Trail.
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Bedini said he then called Berkshire Sheriff’s Control and told them he and Gleason would go up to the area to investigate. Bedini and Gleason then met a person from the Department of Conservation and Recreation near the area, and went up into the woods where they found two acres of land were already burning, Bedini said.
He said the fire was spreading east and west, and at that point he not only dispatched his own fire department, but began calling for mutual aid from every town in the area that had all-terrain vehicles.
"ATVs and manpower were what we were looking for," Bedini said.
He said the fire was sparked by a high-tension line that was leaning against a tree.
Besides using all-terrain vehicles to get teams of firefighters into the woods, firefighters used Indian tanks (water-carrying backpacks with a hose attached) to carry water into the woods, and made use of rakes, shovels, chainsaws and portable pumps to fight the fire. Bedini said they also pumped water from Beaver Pond, which was nearby.
While temperatures on Saturday were between 80 and 90 degrees, the wind was calm most of the day.
"If we had a lot higher winds up here, it would have probably been worse,’ Bedini said.
He said the brush fire on Saturday was the fourth the town has had within a week and a half.
"We just lost all our snow up here two weeks ago, and that is why they’re starting," she said.
He said a fire early last week was also caused by a high tension line. Two other fires were the result of people burning brush and the wind picking up carrying the embers.
Besides the woods being dry, the December 2008 ice storm toppled hundreds of trees, which are now drying out.
"Every thing is down in the woods, and once a spark goes, it catches," Bedini said.
He said the town has had brush fires bigger than the one on Saturday including one about 15 to 20 years ago that burned for two days on the mountain side between Florida and Rowe.
The Florida Volunteer Fire Department, as well as those across the state, will be on guard on the next few days for brush fires as temperatures continue to hang around 80 degrees and conditions remain mostly dry.
"This year really has been so dry, and I don’t think it (brush fire season) is over yet because the woods are so dry," Bedini said.
Besides the brush fire, the Florida Volunteer Fire Department responded to a motorcycle accident on Route 2 in Savoy Saturday afternoon and a call involving a kayak overturned in the Deerfield River.
State police said four people from Ludlow were traveling west near the Florida and Savoy line when the lead motorcycle got into an accident. A separate accident involving the other three motorcycles happened at the same time, according to police. Police said the four riders sustained minor injuries and were taken to North Adams Regional Hospital.
Additional information wasn’t available Sunday about the overturned kayak.
To reach Meghan Foley, e-mail mfoley@thetranscript.com.
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