Breathe Easy Berkshires Examines Impact of Butternut Fire

Breathe Easy Berkshires leads group discussions last week to catalog the effects of the fire on the region through personal experiences.

PITTSFIELD, Mass.— Environmentalists last week opened the floor for reflections on the Butternut Fire, highlighting its air quality effects in Pittsfield.

Breathe Easy Berkshires, a project of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, invited attendees to share what they smelled, saw, heard, touched, tasted, and thought during the wildfire that tore through over 1,600 acres in Great Barrington in late November.

At the BEAT headquarters, project managers Andrew Ferrara and Drake Reed led group discussions with people from all over Berkshire County. Air-quality monitors in Pittsfield showed a spike during the fire's worst day, reaching an unhealthy level.

"I smelled it in my back yard when I went out of my house with my dog. I smelled it first and then I saw a haze, and then I kind of walked in a circle when I couldn't see a source of the haze," said Pittsfield resident Elliott Hunnewell.

"It was all around me and I was listening very carefully for sirens and I couldn't hear anything but birds."

Some Greenagers employees who work close to the fires said the air felt heavy and required a KN95 mask. Project supervisor Rosemary Wessel observed a lack of personal safety information from authorities, such as a masking advisory for particulate matter.

"Everyone thought was in their area," she said. "So it was one of those things where even though it was far away, it smelled like it was right in your neighborhood."

The Breath Easy project measures air quality in Pittsfield's environmental justice communities, Morningside and West Side neighborhoods, and studies the potential health effects of air pollution. It mostly focuses on sources such as power plants and traffic emissions but the Butternut Fire provided an opportunity to study how extreme weather events impact air quality.