Fire crews on both US coasts battle wildfires

POMPTON LAKES, N.J. — Fire crews battled small wildfires across the Northeast U.S. on Monday, including a blaze in New York and New Jersey that killed a parks employee over the weekend and postponed Veterans Day plans.

A quarter-inch of rain fell overnight from Sunday into Monday in a forest area straddling the border between the two states, giving a slight respite to firefighters.

The fire is one of several burning on the East Coast amid a lack of much rainfall since September. An employee of the New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation Department who was assisting firefighting crews died Saturday when he was hit by a falling tree.

The East Coast fires were burning as much larger wildfires raged in California.

Firefighters continued making progress against a wildfire northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County that broke out Wednesday and quickly exploded in size due to dry, warm and gusty Santa Ana winds.

The Mountain Fire in Ventura County prompted thousands of residents to flee their homes and was 36% contained as of Monday. The fire’s size remains around 32 square miles (about 83 square kilometers). The Mountain Fire has destroyed more than 170 structures, most of them homes, officials said. The cause is under investigation.

In neighboring Nevada, authorities ordered the evacuation of hundreds of homes southwest of Reno and closed the main highway to Lake Tahoe after a wind-whipped wildfire erupted Monday and spread quickly through mountainside vegetation.

About 3,000 people were told to leave, said Adam Mayberry, spokesperson for the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District. Rain began to fall as local, state and federal crews arrived to battle the blaze, Mayberry said.

Across the country on the New Jersey and New York border, crews worked to contain the the 4.7-square-mile (about 12.2 square-kilometer) fire dubbed the Jennings Creek Wildfire, although no evacuations had been ordered, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

Officials said the overnight rainfall was far less than what was needed to extinguish numerous brush fires that have broken out around New Jersey since the middle of last week. At least four other wildfires in central to northern New Jersey were mostly or completely contained as of Monday.

In order to find and fight the fires, crews are navigating a maze of country roads, lakes and steep hills amid dense forests. Trees there have dropped most of their leaves onto parched ground, masking a potential danger.

“Beneath the surface leaf litter that falls off the trees, that stuff is bone dry,” Bryan Gallagher, a forest ranger with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said at a media briefing. “So right now you get a little bit of rain that puts that surface fire out. But if it’s in the duff it’s going to stay there. It’s going to smolder like a cigar until it gets dry enough and then that fire can pop up again.”

A firefighting helicopter capable of dropping 350 gallons (1,325 liters) at a time was being used to help combat the Jennings Creek fire. The National Guard deployed two Black Hawk helicopters for water drops, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

In West Milford, New Jersey, a Veterans Day ceremony was postponed to later in the month because of the firefighting effort, said Rudy Hass, the local Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. commander.

“Many of those personnel currently engaged with the fires are veterans themselves, and right now we need to keep them in our thoughts as they spend many hours, day and night, doing all they can in order protect our great communities in that area,” he posted online.

Meanwhile, New York State Police said they were investigating the death of Dariel Vasquez, the 18-year-old state parks employee killed Saturday while fighting a fire near New York state’s Greenwood Lake.

Health advisories were issued over the weekend for parts of New York, including New York City, and northeastern New Jersey due to unhealthy air quality produced by smoke from the fires, but conditions improved after the rainfall and changes in wind direction.

Dana Van Allen, of Ringwood, New Jersey, said she awoke early Saturday to what smelled like a burning campfire. She realized the fires were close enough to leave ashes on her deck.

“It was very stifling. We were very scared,” she recalled Monday.

In Massachusetts, one wildfire among several fueled by powerful wind gusts and dry leaves has burned around 400 acres (162 hectares) in the Lynn Woods Reservation, a municipal park extending across about 3.4 square miles (8.8 square kilometers) in the city some 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Boston.

The Lynn Fire Department cited “a dry spell we have not seen during this time of year in many years.”

“We believe we have the fire contained using the main fire roads. We will maintain a presence to ensure the fire doesn’t spread further,” Lynn Fire Chief Dan Sullivan said in a statement late Sunday.

The Northeast has been experiencing prolonged dry conditions. In New Jersey, the state Department of Environmental Protection is planning a hearing on Tuesday to review its water supply conditions. Before Sunday night, the last measurable rainfall in New Jersey occurred Sept. 28.