Blaze on Bear Mountain takes out 73 acres but no homes or hikers

SALISBURY — A forest fire burned 73 acres in the Bear Mountain area of the Taconic Range Tuesday, May 10.According to Jason Wilson, chief of the Lakeville Hose Company, the fire was concentrated in the Ball Brook camp area which is just above Scoville Ore Mine Road.Photographer Joseph Meehan was out that morning taking sunrise photos. He didn’t realize the fire was moving slowly across the peak but he saw it and captured an image of it that can be seen at The Millerton News’ website, www.tricornernews.com. Meehan said the fire looked like some kind of amoeba snaking in a narrow path across the mountaintop.The initial 911 call for “an unknown fire” was received at Litchfield County Dispatch at approximately 12 minutes before midnight on Monday, May 9.“We spent all of Tuesday on the fire scene,” Wilson said. “We went in at 6 a.m. and exited the scene about 7 p.m.”Lakeville Hose Company crews were assisted by fire companies from North Canaan, Cornwall, Norfolk and Sheffield, Mass., in addition to a team from the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection forestry unit. The Millerton fire company was standing by to cover for Lakeville, and the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service was also on standby.Salisbury resident Chris Janelli’s morning began a little earlier than usual on that Tuesday — at 1 a.m., with a phone call from First Selectman Curtis Rand, warning him that the fire was near his home.“He told me to look out the window,” said Janelli, who lives at the end of Scoville Ore Mine Road, off Undermountain Road (Route 41).Janelli couldn’t see anything from inside the house, but from outside he could see the fire on the mountainside.And thus began a long day, with teams of firefighters moving into the woods above Janelli’s Bingham Brook Farm, quickly clearing an access trail and setting smaller “back fires” to burn up the underbrush and deny the main blaze new fuel.Incredibly, after the initial warning, Janelli went back to bed.“It wasn’t going to get here in four hours,” he shrugged.On Saturday, May 14, Janelli led a reporter into the woods where the firefighters had been. It’s a fairly steep area about 200 yards above the two houses on the property; the trail runs roughly north and south.Janelli said the trail clearing team was particularly impressive: “Guys with chain saws, guys with backpack leaf blowers, guys with rakes — and they were moving.”All that was visible on Saturday along the newly cleared trail was burned leaves and scorched laurel.The main fire did not make it to the preventive fires set behind Janelli’s home.Janelli praised the efforts of the firefighters and said he wasn’t really worried — except when the wind shifted.“Yeah, it was exciting, I guess.”By Tuesday afternoon, firefighters were using the area next to the tennis courts on Mount Riga Corporation property — about a quarter of a mile from the dam at South Pond on the Mount Washington Road — as a staging ground. The teams moved through the woods on a well-defined if not especially wide trail to the fire area. Mount Riga Corporation caretaker Danny Brazee assisted, with his intimate knowledge of the area, which is a mixture of private land owned by the Mount Riga Corporation and National Park Service land that includes the local section of the Appalachian Trail. The trail is the eastern border of the corporation’s property; the fire was beyond that.There are about 40 summer camps on Mount Riga, but none of them were in any danger. The town of Salisbury maintains the narrow dirt road going up the mountain, and the corporation makes available a public beach, access to an old cemetery, hiking opportunities, the Bald Peak lookout and a waterfall.It is worth noting, however, that corporation lands are clearly marked with signs that prohibit camping and fires.Margie Vail, who with husband Charlie lives at the end of Bunker Hill Road (they also own a camp on Riga Lake) said “it smelled as if someone put out a campfire in our yard.” By the late afternoon the smell was detectable in the Salisbury and Lakeville village centers.Wilson said that only one day-hiker on the Appalachian Trail had to be directed away from the fire area.It was a busy day. “We had approximately 120 firefighters from a total of 11 companies working to put out the fire,” he said.There were no injuries among the firefighters.“The biggest challenge was the difficulty of the terrain,” Wilson said. “There are no roads in the area and the fire units literally had to blaze their own trails, to get the equipment, hoses and personnel in.“The guys really worked hard and did a great job.”