(Collected from internet, thanks Beaker.)

By Robert Mills, rmills@lowellsun.com
Updated: 08/30/2010 08:11:41 PM EDT

GROTON — Firefighters from 18 communities converged on Groton and Dunstable Monday evening to battle a brush fire that burned an estimated 10 to 15 acres between Chicopee Row and Martins Pond Road.

Dunstable Fire Chief Charlie Rich, coordinating efforts to battle the blaze from a command point set up on Chicopee Road, said firefighters learned of the blaze at about 3:30 p.m., but initially had a hard time locating it.

Rich said the fire was about a half-mile from the nearest street.

Firefighters accessed it from Chicopee Row and from Floyd Hill Road, a dead-end off Martins Pond Road.

As darkness fell, crews were working to create a perimeter around the fire. Rich said firefighters would be back to continue fighting it first thing in the morning.

A mobile command center and special operations vehicle from the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services joined crews at the scene.

It’s been setup by a dry spell that has had the last significant rainfall in large parts of Southern New England be on June 23rd. Around the 4th of July was spectacular warm but dry weather; then following for Monday it turned extremely hot and humid with temps breaking 100º Monday and Tuesday.

Yesterday, July 10th, some areas received heavy rain. My home, however, barely broke the 1/4″ mark:

Major fires struck in Groton, MA (two separate incidents) and Holden, MA. The Holden fire covered approximately 50 acres and was attended to from Monday (5 July) through Friday. The first Groton fire of around 12 acres was active from Monday through Wednesday, then a fire in a separate section of town was fought on Thursday and Friday. After checking the perimeter and determining the active fire on Saturday was burning with no danger of exposing improved property, and with rain imminent within a few hours, it was allowed to burn without firefighting efforts.

Fires this time of year tend not to spread fast (the Connecticut fire danger hasn’t popped above “Moderate” during this spell yet), but go deep following the roots. Run hoses out into the woods, and leave them in place for a few days even for small one or two acre fires so you can return and wet down the area each day. Grub around with tools like Pulaskis and shovels.

Southwestern Connecticut was hit hardest in this state, with some of the fires reported on the ctfire-ems.com forums being:

4 July: Middletown (South District). Initially under control 1537. 1730 it was running again and a large m/a request made. Durham Tanker, Haddam Tanker and Brush Unit’s, Westfield, Portland, Middletown, DEP to scene. Middlefield, Middletown with cover assignments to South District.

5 July: Bethany, m/a Hamden, Woodbridge, Oxford, Prospect, Beacon Falls, Seymour for coverage. Fire located 1-1/2 miles off the road; ATVs could bring FFs about half-way in then rest on foot. Hose laid to fire.

7 July: Mulch pile fire on state property, Farmington. East Farms (2 Engines), Farmington (2 Engines), Oakland Gardens (Engine), Tunxis Hose (Engine), Plainville (Coverage), State DOT for front end loader.

7 July: New Milford, under 1 acre burning along power lines. Waterwitch, Gaylordsville, Northville, Brookfield (last three for tanker & manpower), New Milford Ambulance, Roxbury Rehab Unit

11 July: Voluntown, mulch pile. Voluntown, Griswold (2 ETs), Jewett City (Engine, Ladder), plus tankers from Preston City, Lisbon, Baltic, Moosup

The first Groton fire was accessible only to ATVs, and my sources report a 20′ x 18″ trench was hand dug around the perimeter. The second fire would see the hiring and deployment of three bulldozers on Friday. Bulldozers are very, very rarely used in New England. Both Connecticut and Massachusetts own one, but the single time I know of in the last ten years that each has been used they were used primarily to build an access road to a fire deep in the woods; in Groton the dozers were used to make fire line.

Pictures from the Groton Fires sent to me:
From the 8-9 July Fire:

From the July 5-7th incident…Brookline for a UTV! (With the fire also burning in Holden taking resources from Central Mass, a task force from Metro Boston was pulled in, along with resources from District 14 (Framingham region) and Merrimack Valley)

WBZ has a real nice video on the Holden fire here. (In my archives as Holden_July_2010.mpg in case that link disappears). Holden’s press release tallied up 29 communities that had come to it’s assistance.

Mashpee, MA also had a significant fire covering 5 acres. Cape News Net has a great article here (archived copy), from which these photos were taken. Some great, great examples of Brush breakers in action:

Indian New England Before the Mayflower

The author, Howard Russell, also wrote the authoritative history of agriculture in New England, a book I own and have thoroughly enjoyed reading over the years.

An article in the Cape Cod Times:

By Karen Jeffrey
Cape Cod Times
May 31, 2010

That smoke getting in your eyes, your hair and your homes today is coming from Canada, according to the National Weather Service.

Police and fire departments across the Cape are reporting numerous calls from people reporting the smell of smoke, and in some cases, seeing smoke drift across their property this morning.

However, the fires producing the smoke are not local, they are riding air currents down from our neighbor to the north – Canada.

Northwest winds are bringing smoke into Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont from wildfires that are burning in Canada, according to the National Weather Service.

People with respiratory problems were being advised to limit their outdoor activities.

According Canadian press reports there are more than 50 forest fires burning in the in Quebec, including eight that are out of control.

About 1,200 firefighters, including some from Maine, New Brunswick, New Hampshire and western Canada are working to put them out. Canadian newspapers report that Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources reports 73 active forest fires today, mostly north of Toronto. The province rates the forest fire danger “extreme” and has declared a restricted zone in the northeastern part of the province to reduce the danger of human-caused fire.

The weather service says the northwest winds are expected shift to the southwest on this afternoon and end the smoky conditions.

According Canadian press reports there are more than 50 forest fires burning in the in Quebec, including eight that are out of control.

And this was from the National Weather Service:

THE VERMONT AGENCY OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN COORDINATION WITH THE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED AN AIR QUALITY ACTION DAY FOR
ALL OF CENTRAL AND NORTHERN VERMONT. AN AIR QUALITY ACTION DAY
MEANS THAT PARTICULATE CONCENTRATIONS WITHIN THE REGION MAY
APPROACH OR EXCEED UNHEALTHY STANDARDS.

DENSE SMOKE FROM LARGE WILDLAND FOREST FIRES ACROSS CENTRAL QUEBEC
HAS DRIFTED ATOP THE REGION TODAY WITH VISIBILITIES LOCALLY AS
LOW AS 1 MILE BEING REPORTED.

It drifted in Brooklyn around 5:30 or so. Kind of funky seeing smoke everywhere you looked!

URGENT - FIRE WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU ME
810 AM EDT SUN MAY 30 2010

...BREEZY AND DRY CONDITIONS CAUSING HIGH FIRE DANGER TODAY...

.GUSTY NORTHWEST WINDS...DEEP MIXING AND DRY AIR WILL RESULT IN A
HIGH FIRE DANGER TODAY.

...RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EDT THIS EVENING...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CARIBOU HAS ISSUED A RED FLAG
WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EDT THIS EVENING. THE
FIRE WEATHER WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

NORTHWEST WINDS OF 10 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 30 MPH ARE EXPECTED
TODAY. THESE WINDS COMBINED WITH AFTERNOON RELATIVE HUMIDITIES IN
THE 20S WILL RESULT IN A HIGH FIRE DANGER TODAY.

It’s burning in a white pine, red pine, and jack pine area of Huron National Forest and adjacent areas. Wildland Fire Today has some good posts here, here, here, here, and here.

That may not be quite typical of southern New England in how large of areas are pine dominated, although it looks a lot more like southern Maine. But it’s burning in moderate winds and low humidity (14%) that is very common in New England, as well as flat terrain. These are conditions much more like New England then you see in fires out west.

Note the spotting that looks perhaps a mile ahead of the main fire line.

This is a good presentation on spotting, archived here.

“Close In” spotting is stuff that might go a few feet — say cross a 4′ to 6′ control line. If it’s only an occasional spot easily policed by a firefighter with a handtool or indian can, not a problem. If it’s prolific, you need a change in strategy and tactics.

Prolific is one of the big warning signs. Think the ember storms you see in some videos engulfing houses, since they can light an overwhelming number of fires.

Short range: Beyond “close in”; say tens of feet up to 600′

Medium range: 600′ to a mile.

Long range: > 1 mile

This picture shows spotting across a good 40′ of gravel and pavement…clearly this fire was going to require big burnouts from control lines well in advance of the fire to attack it at this time of day. I believe that’s Jack Pine. Jack Pine can be “scrubby” in poor soil, but it can also grow tall and straight. It is closely related too (and can hybridize with) Lodgepole Pine.

It sounds like most progress was made after night fall when they could make good progress on building fire lines as the fire left the crown and came to ground. Makes you think of the need for fairly long range planning, trying to use air resources and initial attack to protect structures and control spot fires during the day while pre-positioning resources like dozers and burn out crews to launch an all out assault once the conditions turn more favorable in the cooler, moister, and usually calmer evening.

The northeast wind on Tuesday, 5/18 that drove it turned to a northwest wind on Wednesday, 5/19. I’d imagine the focus of efforts was to make sure that southern / eastern flank was well secured, as well as being concerned if there were any unknown spot fires that could be driven by the new winds.

The forest types of Huron National Forest:

As a followup, I was the area and found the 1980 Mack Lake Fire which is documented here. It started 8 miles almost due east of this fire.

Lots of good stuff in that report. The Mack Lake fire ranks in the top for forest fire spread and BTU release rate recorded in North America. It averaged 2mph, hit 7mph peak. 27,000 BTUs/foot/second were estimated, with a theoretical maximum (for all forests) being 30,000.

It was a prescribed burn that got out of control, resulting in a LODD (Dozer Operator), 44 structures, and 20,000 acres lost in the first six hours, then it was essentially out except for mop-up.

Perhaps most interesting: This area of Michigan, per tree ring research, experiences a 10,000 acre fire an average of every 28 years.

They seem to follow a basic pattern — the weather isn’t remarkably bad (moderately warm day, moderately low humidity, moderate winds) but once they get going they run like a bat out of hell until it’s either early evening or they run out of jack pine and into hardwoods. Then the fire goes to ground and is easily contained overnight.

The last major fire before this one was Mack Lake, so it this was pretty much right on schedule.

There’s only two LODD incidents I know of in southern New England due to the fire (and not exertion / medical problems). One is this 1938 burn over on Cape Cod which killed three firefighters. The other was in Rhode Island near the Connecticut line, possibly in 1942 although I still have to hunt down official documentation, which again killed three in a burn over of their truck. I don’t know if shelters would make a difference in the circumstances of these burn overs. It may be better to emphasize the Canadian / Australian model of better awareness and avoidance for the conditions in this area.

Reminded me of the early Connecticut forest fire guides written at a time that tools and equipment were so primitive and in short supply that it directed using things like green cedar boughs to beat out fires, and that wet sacks worked well too.

Now, they clear all growth on either side of the roads and boundary lines of forests and burn the debris so that accidental fire could be prevented from spreading inside the forests. How far they are effective is anybody’s guess ! At vantage points like hill tops, tree-top machans, fire watchers on daily wages are engaged and stationed during the fire season to watch for any fire occurrence through indications of rising smoke, and to immediately communicate to the ground staff through wireless network.

Forest fires are extinguished manually by beating the fire with green leaf brooms unlike in developed countries where helicopters are used to sprinkle or shower water over burning areas, which is very expensive. Fire tenders cannot reach the spot due to steep terrain and absence of roads.

Rest here, with an archived one here.

A really great write up of managing fire in New England Pine Barrens, archive here.

In addition to those “natural community” issues, few active firefighters have seen truly severe fire conditions in New England.

Although rainfall alone doesn’t dictate fire danger (frequency of rain is likely much more important in New England in keeping fire danger to “high” or below), the following graphs show a very sharp difference between pre-1970 and post-1970 climate. You can get more data for different regions of the New England states here.

I strongly suspect that it is not coincidence that we haven’t had a serious forest fire problem in southern New England since the early 1960s. Before, roughly, 1970 we used to experience a deep drought about every ten years. Nothing since 1970 has matched those 10 year droughts.

Also I’m still researching the frequency rain events. Rain tends to “reset” the fire danger.

Let’s assume a cycle like this; while conjecture it’s not an unreasonable cycle based on my observations over the years:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: High
Day 6: High
Day 7: Very High
Day 8: Very High
Day 9: Very High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Now add in one overnight rain:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: Rain overnight (moderate)
Day 6: Moderate
Day 7: High
Day 8: High
Day 9: High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Most people wouldn’t notice a major impact from an extra shower or two in April, but it could be having a very large impact on fire danger.