VT Digger
Smoke surrounds a firefighter battling a forest fire in Killington. Photo by Murray McGrath 
Trenches are being dug through the forest in an effort to contain a fire burning underground in Killington. Photo by Murray McGrath 
A firefighters digs into the ground to get at a subterranean fire in Killington. Photo by Murray McGrath 
A fire in the root system of a forest in Killington is difficult to contain and snuff out. Photo by Murray McGrath
KILLINGTON — Firefighters are still working to extinguish a forest fire discovered Friday evening near Route 4, on Deer Leap Mountain.
The fire is now under control and confined to a third of an acre, fire officials say. But the blaze is burning underground, and has therefore been difficult to snuff.
Ethan Ready, public affairs officer with the U.S. Forest Service, said the fire has not changed size since Friday night, when firefighters from eight local departments worked until midnight to try to control the blaze.
The Forest Service took command of the fire Saturday morning, and “federal resources will be staffing and working on the fire throughout the week,” Ready wrote in an email.
New England’s dry summer has combined with higher-than-average temperatures to cause intense evaporation, according to state officials. Those conditions have dried out the ground to about a foot deep on Deer Leap Mountain, which flanks Route 4 near Pico Mountain Ski Resort.
The Deer Leap fire has traveled through the forest root systems, spreading more slowly than a treetop fire would, but requiring extra effort to put out.
Vermont forests are full of organic matter, such as downed trees and logs, and that material normally holds enough moisture to prevent fires from moving underground. But this year, conditions have been so dry, that same organic matter that normally stops fire has fueled it, said Kathy Decker, forest protection program manager at the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
“That’s what the ground fires are really all about — that organic matter in the soil is so dry, it actually can burn,” Decker said.
To combat the burn, firefighters are digging trenches 1 foot deep and 3 feet wide around the area of the fire; that removes the ultra-dry top layers of organic matter that burn most easily.
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Murray McGrath, whose family owns the Long Trail Inn, is a member of Killington Search & Rescue and helped fight the fire Friday night and Saturday.
While digging a trench, he watched embers burst into flame, igniting the root system of a birch tree — an image he compared to switching on a gas stove.
“It was scary,” he said.
McGrath’s son Connor lives nearby, and was the first to notice the smoke coming from the mountain. He’s a member of the Killington Fire Department, and he hiked into the forest to assess the situation. He began extinguishing flames when they popped up from the ground.
His work was crucial, officials said; he stopped the ground fire from morphing into a fire roaring up into the tree canopy, at which point it would have easily spread.
“If it wasn’t for Connor McGrath, it definitely would have spread quickly,” said Mark Fiore, Killington’s fire warden. “The wind would have taken it right up the hill.”
U.S. Forest Service officials say the fire was likely caused by a campfire left unattended.
“The local fire departments have been responding to abandoned campfires throughout the summer, which becomes taxing on them,” Ready said.
Fiore has responded to three forest fires in Killington alone this summer, including another one that was caused by a campfire. In an average year, Fiore said, he sees maybe one forest fire, if any.
Forest Service and state officials encourage campers to check current conditions before building a fire, and never leave a fire unattended. Given the dry conditions, even experienced campers could make high-stakes errors.
“Usually you douse it down with water until it’s a little trickle of smoke, and then you walk away,” Decker said. “But you can’t walk away today. There’s too many fuels in the ground that could burn.”
The Forest Service website instructs campers to use an abundance of caution. “Use alternatives to campfires during periods of high fire danger, even if there are no restrictions,” it reads. “Nine out of 10 fires are caused by humans.”
Patty McGrath, Murray’s wife and co-owner of the inn, has kept the Killington community updated on a Facebook page for locals. While commenters were quick to point fingers at out-of-staters for improperly extinguishing the campfire, McGrath noted that the inn’s parking lot, where hikers and campers also park, was filled mostly with Vermont license plates late last week.
“There are a lot of locals who have taken up more hiking and camping, picnicking, etc., who are not familiar with rules or the ‘leave no trace’ philosophy,” she said.
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The conditions that caused the Deer Leap fire persist all around Vermont.
Decker has heard of at least four ground fires in Vermont this summer, including one in the Northeast Kingdom and others to the south, such as Killington and Springfield.
Four is a lot of ground fires for a single summer, Decker said.
“Regular looks like none,” she said. “This situation is not an every-year occurrence. There might be some localized areas that get this dry, but for the widespread area of Vermont to be this dry at this level is unusual.”
While the West Coast fires that have ravaged parts of California, Oregon and Washington this summer have been linked definitively to climate change, the question of whether climate change is connected to the Vermont wildfires is complex.
Ali Kosiba, climate forester for the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, studies the way Vermont’s forests respond to changes in climate. Paradoxically, watching the trends in precipitation and temperature over a period of decades, she said Vermont has actually been getting wetter in recent years.
“We’re getting more rain,” she said. “That’s actually a significant trend.”
Still, this year, the Northeast is abnormally dry. Nearby states, such as Maine, face even harsher droughts than Vermont.
Climate change is likely to bring a new level of unpredictability, with future years departing further from average conditions. Most important for the forests, Kosiba said, is that this type of drought doesn’t persist for years.
“Hopefully that doesn’t happen, but with climate change, we’re prepared for all sorts of new normal,” she said.
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