A planned prescribed burn at a military installation resulted in an unplanned fire that extended to a cache of large PVC drainage pipes in the neighboring town and a subsequent third alarm response on the dry, breezy afternoon of Tuesday April 14, 2026.

The Major General Oscar G. Westover Air Reserve Base in the City of Chicopee is the largest US Military installation in Western Massachusetts and home to the venerable 439th Air Lift Wing of the US Air Force. As such, it employs several thousand uniformed and civilian personnel who are protected by a capable and dedicated Department of Defense Crash-Fire-Rescue Department. Each year, the fire fighters of Westover FD are required to conduct a series of controlled burns around the base at prescribed times to keep invasive vegetation down to a minimum and to ward off wild life that may pose a threat of bird strikes to inbound and outbound aircraft. On the afternoon of April 14th, one such burn was underway. This evolution had been conducted countless times before, error free. Unfortunately, the wind decided that that "winning streak" should come to an end. While Westover crews were wrapping up operations for the day, embers from the fire were taken by a gust of wind and blown over the perimeter fence line into the neighboring town of Ludlow and landed in the outside storage yard of a company that manufactures large PVC drainage pipes, a stockpile of which was the unlucky recipient of the aforementioned embers. Predictably, the highly flammable PVC pipes became engulfed in flames in a matter of minutes. Ludlow FD fire fighters were called while Westover crews had to make their way to a gate to circumnavigate the perimeter fence. Responding LFD fire fighters, seeing an ominous column of black smoke in the sky, struck a third alarm believing that more manpower would be needed to suppress the fire bringing mutual aid from Wilbraham, Three Rivers, Palmer and Chicopee FD's to the scene.

The fire, while still putting up an impressive column of smoke from the burning petrochemical based pipes that was visible from miles away, was quickly knocked down however and mutual aid companies were released in a relatively short period of time. Westover and Ludlow fire fighters remained on scene for two hours wetting down the area formerly occupied by ready for installation drainage pipes and now occupied by a hot, molten mass of plastic sludge.