It started on a stovetop. That is what investigators are saying about the fire that ripped through Building 4 at the Sugarloaf Estates on River Road early Saturday morning. Everything happened fast—the call came in around 1:20 a.m. and by the time the first trucks were pulling up, flames were already visible from the windows and reaching for the roof. It’s lucky, honestly, that nobody got hurt. No residents, no pets, no firefighters injured during the whole ordeal.
Sixteen different departments showed up to help. Imagine the noise, that chaos in the middle of the night. Deputy Fire Chief Mike Zeoli said they tried to go in at first, but the fire was just too aggressive, so they had to switch tactics and fight it from the outside with ladder trucks. Two apartments? Totally trashed. Little left to save, according to Zeoli. The smell of smoke still hangs in the air, a thick, acrid reminder of what happened.
Actually, wait—let me get back to the residents. Mia Snedeker, a student at UMass, was coming home in an Uber right when it was all breaking out. She saw the flames from the road and immediately thought about those other fires in Amherst. Now she is stuck packing soot-covered clothes into her car, trying to clean things up while also dealing with, you know, midterms and exams. It’s just this layer of grit on everything. She mentioned that for her, it’s an inconvenience, but for the neighbors—the ones who lived one door down—it’s everything gone. Everything.
Then there were Alexia Minkin and Liv Charette. They thought the alarm was fake at first. You know how those things go, usually just someone burning toast. But then they sat in their car, watching the roof catch fire, and the reality of it hit them. Minkin said she had never felt her heart beat like that. It’s scary stuff. They ended up driving to Gardner just to find a bed for the night, and now they’re looking for a hotel. Or maybe they aren’t, maybe they’ve already figured it out, but the stress is definitely still there.
Cooking fires are the most common kind, says Jake Wark from the state’s fire services. He keeps reminding people to stand by the pan, keep the stove area clear, don’t leave the room. It sounds basic, but these things spiral out of control in seconds. Zeoli agrees—check your smoke alarms, he says. It is the simple stuff that saves lives when things go wrong.
Route 47 was shut down for a while. It’s quiet now, relatively speaking. The Red Cross stepped in to help those displaced, getting them to a church for support, and the whole community effort was massive. So many departments involved—South Deerfield, Amherst, Leverett, the list goes on. Misryoum reports that the focus remains on recovery, even as the displaced residents figure out what comes next. What do you do when your stuff is just black dust in a bag?