By Maddie Hanna
The Concord Monitor
FRANKLIN, N.H. — It took firefighters more than 24 hours to put out a 3-acre brush fire that was discovered Saturday morning in a remote area of Franklin near a Boy Scout campsite.
Though officials say the fire — which burned mostly underground — likely started near a fire pit at the campsite, “truly I don’t know what started it,” Franklin fire Capt. Steve Fecteau said yesterday afternoon.
Fecteau said the fire had been smoldering for days, and “it could have been a lightning strike, even though we haven’t had that much. There’s so many different things it could be.”
About 30 firefighters from eight departments responded Saturday after state forest officials at a fire tower reported smoke.
Firefighters discovered the fire on land owned by the city of Franklin off Montgomery Road, near Andover and Salisbury. Smoke was coming up from holes in the ground, Fecteau said, in some places burning as deep as 12 inches into the soil and forest material.
That made it difficult to extinguish, Fecteau said.
“You have to dig the ground out every time you see a little piece of smoke,” he said.
“Over 3 acres, that’s a lot of area,” he said.
Firefighters also had to bring their equipment in with all- terrain vehicles since the site was so hard to access, Fecteau said.
While most of the firefighters went home Saturday night, Fecteau said one crew kept watch until the others returned at 8 yesterday morning.
Firefighters will go back to the site tomorrow to make sure everything is extinguished, he said.
“Really the rain is here at a perfect time,” Fecteau said.
Copyright 2010 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor