A late afternoon fire quickly rose to four alarms in the East Springfield section of the city and sent a towering column of smoke over fifty feet in the air on Friday August 8, 2025. The incident began shortly after six o'clock in the evening when employees of Chet's Scrapyard were winding down their workday and getting ready to head home and one them noticed smoke emitting from a pile of scrap that was estimated to be fifty feet high and over one hundred feet wide. From that moment to the time the first Springfield fire companies arrived, the fire rapidly developed from a smoky/smoldering incipient stage to fully involved with flames engulfing the pile and rising high overhead. Page Boulevard command split resources on scene into two divisions, North and South, with companies setting up master stream operations both in the scrapyard on Page and North of the scrapyard on Observer Street which is a dead end street that overlooks the yard. Crews put two ladder towers into operation along with hand lines initially to contain the fire and prevent it from running up the hill to threaten homes on Observer. Very early into the operation, water supply issues arose, requiring the striking of the second, third and fourth alarms within an hour of the arrival of the first in companies to build out a relay pumping operation that would be needed to throw more than three million gallons of water on the fire over the course of the next four hours and bring mutual aid to the scene of a fire in the city from every surrounding town. By the time the fire was under control, it was well past ten o'clock in the evening before mutual aid was released from the scene and city companies would remain on scene until sunrise on August 9th darkening down hot spots. No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire remains under investigation by the SFD Arson Squad.