SAUGUS — The Breakheart Reservation will remain closed indefinitely as firefighters continue battling a number of brush fires that have ripped through the park since they broke out over a week ago, the Department of Conservation and Recreation announced.
The brush fires first broke out around 5 p.m. on Aug. 16, drawing a second alarm response from Saugus firefighters and forcing the closure of the park. In the week-plus since, the reservation has only been open for a few hours on the morning of Aug. 17 before being forced to close again as the fires continued raging.
Officials had refrained from closing the park indefinitely, initially closing the park for days at a time. But, amid extreme drought conditions, officials were left with no other choice.
Saugus Fire Capt. Tom Kaminski described the reservation as a “tinderbox” — and said he couldn’t remember a summer as dry as this one.
Officials said at a press conference that the brush fires had burned through roughly 10 percent of the park’s area.
DCR officials said they believe five blazes broke out initially before two merged into one and a new fire ignited. As a result, the fires are at various levels of containment.
Kaminski said officials were investigating the origins of the fires as suspicious, in part because it was difficult to imagine the blazes starting any other way with no recent lightning and no power lines in the park.
DCR Chief Fire Warden Dave Celino said the situation at Breakheart Reservation is a ground fire, meaning firefighters must work to keep dry decayed material underground such as root systems and logs from burning. Extreme drought conditions make this job harder as they prevent water from saturating the ground.
“What this rain doesn’t do — it does not saturate into the ground,” Celino said. “It’s not going to put out the ground fires or the heat that’s in there…. We’re in this for the long haul until we get a season-ending event.”
A wildfire season-ending event could be a tropical storm, or four to five days of sequential rainfall, according to Celino.
Charlie McKenna can be reached at [email protected].
