The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Brush fires under control, officials say
MIDDLETOWN — Two brush fires that drew a massive response from local and state first responders this week have been fully extinguished, officials said Thursday.
“The fire line is completely solid, so we’re starting to pull out our assets, our resources,” Middletown South District Fire Chief James Trzaski said. “We’re going to be maintaining just a patrol on the fire every day.”
The first blaze was reported Tuesday afternoon about a quarter-mile from Pratt & Whitney, and drew more than 100 firefighters, along with personnel from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and state and local police. Authorities believe that fire was started by a tree falling on a power line, which ignited the brush.
Early Wednesday, a second, smaller fire ignited on on Freeman Road. Officials have not yet determined the cause of that blaze, after initially describing it as “suspicious.”
“It’s still under investigation,” Trzaski said Thursday.
“We’re trying to rule out that it was intentionally set. We’re just trying to figure out if there’s any plausibility that an ember
or something could have gone that far and started that fire.”
“It may take a little while to determine if it was intentional or not,” he added.
The estimated amount of burned acreage appears to be far less than what fire officials had originally reported. The fire near Pratt & Whitney is now estimated to have burned close to 155 acres in total, while the fire on Freeman Road is estimated to have burned just over 21 acres, according to Trzaski.
Will Healey, a spokesperson for DEEP, said late Wednesday that crews had wrapped up work, but were planning to return on Thursday. The agency’s crews spent Wednesday working on burnouts — “purposely burning the edges to prevent spread” — on both brush fires, Healey said.
While spring brush fires can sap local resources and present a danger to property owners, the blaes also serve a role in the ecosystem of the eastern woodlands.
Historically, the region’s woodlands experienced a lot of fire — much of it from burning by indigenous people, explained Robert Fahey, an associate professor in the University of Connecticut’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment. “The ecosystem developed with fire, and that fire’s been excluded now for 400 years,” he said.
The dry ground conditions mean fires will burn along the ground, leaving trees largely untouched. For some forests, that’s beneficial, Fahey said. The problem in Connecticut, he said, is woodlands are often not contiguous.
“That just makes it really hard to do any proscribed fire,” he said. “It also makes it really important to put out fires that do start because there’s not usually very much space for a fire to burn without interacting with people’s houses.”
“If there wasn’t houses everywhere, then letting these fires burn would actually be a good thing,” he added.