Crews continue arriving to take on Hawthorne Fire in Berlin

The fire fight going on around the Hawthorne Fire for almost nine days continues. It has swallowed over 120 acres as crews make progress on containment and extinguishing the brush fire.

Across the state, because of abnormally dry conditions, brush fires continue to pop up. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is now reporting over 60 they are either monitoring or actively fighting.

“What we are doing is we are looking for hot spots, potentially causing control problems, get around it, put those out and put this thing to bed,” Operations Section Chief at the command post Ryan Hughes said.

Crews were signaling cautious optimism on the fire’s ninth day.

“Really it’s just creeping and smoldering is what the current fire behavior is and even that creeping fire behavior is taking a dive every day so less and less of that daily,” Hughes said.

Hughes is in from Vermont to work on the command staff team handling Hawthorne. He said crews continued to make progress on containment, even as leaves continued to fall, compromising their fire lines and enabling the occasional spread.

“Really being diligent with our operations out there, we are aware of the challenges in the fall here,” he said.

Local crews are still scattering the mountain, engaged in containment. But there has been some changeover in outsourced support.

Many regional crews have had to head home to states such as New Hampshire as brush fires continue to pop up all around New England. Replacements to staff have come from as close as New York City, and as far away as Quebec and the Oregon-Washington state line.

“We are bringing in different people with different levels of skillset we don’t typically need for wildfire quite frankly,” Christopher Martin, DEEP’s director of forestry, said.

State officials are reminding people of the burn ban that continues on state land. They are also asking for extreme caution to continue with any open flames.

Something as simple as a candle in a Jack-O-Lantern can pose a threat. Other threats include outdoor grills, matches, cigarettes or sparks.

“You don’t want to be the one to start something locally,” Martin said.

Back in Berlin, Fire Chief Jonn Massirio spent the afternoon getting a close look at the front lines.

“It was very encouraging and promising what we saw up there,” he said when he came down to the command post.

He checked in with crews still taking out hot spots and re-enforcing fire containment lines. He said the focus continues to be on the south end of the fire itself.

“It’s been quite amazing to see how this all comes together,” Massirio said.

He said he is grateful for all of the support over the course of the last week in getting a look at how far his team has come, but he still expects plenty of work ahead.

 “We are going to be vigilant with this heat and we are going to watch it until it’s over,” Massirio said.

Local command staff still expect a fight ahead as well and are reminding people to keep unauthorized drones out of the sky, and stay off closed trails, as they continue to make progress.

“We know people are curious, it’s something people want to look at, but really let us be in there, let us do our jobs so we don’t have to worry about your safety and taking care of you as well,” Hughes said.