AMHERST — Two simultaneous fires struck Amherst on Thursday, one at a University of Massachusetts Amherst lab and another brush fire in south Amherst.
The lab fire occurred at around 6:55 p.m., when the fire department got a call from Bowditch Hall on the UMass campus. The source of that fire was a first-floor, industrial-grade oven, on which the ventilation motor is believed to have failed, according to an Amherst Fire Department press release.
“The items that ignited and burned in the oven were experiments involving large quantities of plant material inside paper bags that were being dried,” the release says. “Damage was confined to the oven itself and its contents; at this time there is no cost estimate for the replacement of the oven.”
At the same time, another fire ignited in the area of 222 Station Road in south Amherst, leaving only four firefighters to initially respond to the UMass fire.
“This was found to be a brush fire on Town of Amherst Conservation Land in the Lawrence Swamp area,” the press release said. “The cause of this fire is still under investigation.”
The brush fire took around two and a half hours to put out, according to the fire department, partially because of its distance from the road.