Hundreds of firefighters from New York and New Jersey are struggling to contain a mammoth wildfire that straddles the two states, and it has already torched some 3,000 acres — an area about three and a half times the size of Central Park.
The Jennings Creek Fire — the largest of nine blazes that have erupted across the bone-dry Garden State over the last week or so — is refusing to quietly. After four days, it’s still raging along Greenwood Lake’s eastern edge — just 30 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan.
Crews had contained about 10% of the burn on Monday. Flames threaten 14 buildings in Greenwood Lake, New York, and 10 in New Jersey — including in a historic district outside West Milford.
The fires were fueled by winds and the driest conditions in the New York City area since records began in 1865 — around the end of the Civil War, according to Fox Weather.
The quarter-inch of rain that fell overnight Sunday gave crews in West Milford, New Jersey, and Orange County, New York, a much-needed break — but they were back at it again in the morning, fighting the mushrooming inferno with the help of several water-carrying helicopters.
“We’re throwing everything we’ve got at it, and we are making progress,” Christopher Franek, an assistant division warden with the fire service, told The Post on Monday. “But we are being cautious because this is extreme fire danger.”
Despite their heroic efforts, the blaze is still out of control.
“It’s extremely rugged terrain,” Franek said of the northern Appalachian range where there are few roads or even hiking trails.
“That’s making access to go fight the fire hard — it’s hard to get equipment in there. Some areas are too steep for bulldozers,” he said. “So it’s somebody on the ground, digging fire lines, choking on smoke and dust, trying to suppress this fire with manual labor.”
The NJ Forest Fire Service has been working hand-in-hand with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Division of Forest Protection and Fire Management to coordinate the response, which involves a myriad of local departments.
The 300 or so New Jersey firefighters have been joined by 277 first responders on the New York side, which includes firefighters from 44 companies; six law enforcement agencies; and four EMS crews, the New York DEC said.
There are also four helicopters hovering overhead: two from the New York State Police and two UH-60M Blackhawks from the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs.
The Blackhawks can carry 660 gallons of water, which they are using to douse the woodland inferno that sparked up during a lengthy drought that’s left the forests dry — and ripe for catastrophe.
It’s not clear what started the fire or in which state it began.
Walter Nugent, chair of the Fire Science department at New Jersey City University, told The Post on Monday that firefighters have two main ways to fight such epic blazes: douse them in water and starve them of fuel.
That means that as they dump water on the flames, they have to rip up the underbrush to create a firebreak.
“You have to cool and quench, and you have to remove the fire load,” Nugent said. “You say, ‘Well, what’s burning now? What else has the potential?’ If you can possibly make a break … that helps.”
He added that the mountainous, rugged topography of northern New Jersey and southern New York can make a hard job even harder.
“You could have natural blocks that you can’t get through, or you could get to certain areas, but you have to hike for how long just to get there,” he said. “It’s extremely difficult, and everything is based on the terrain itself.”
But there are some things working in firefighters’ favor — namely, that Monday hasn’t been particularly windy.
“If it was, it’s even worse,” Nugent said, noting that huge outdoor fires easily spread their embers, which catch on the wind currents and spread the blaze further.
So firefighters must use every geographic feature they can to slow it down — including mountains, roads, rivers and any patch of concrete that can act as a firebreak.
Franek, of the fire service, said that’s what they’ve been doing — and they’re even using shovels and leaf blowers to cut back the overgrowth from all roads that were designed as firebreaks, but haven”t been used in ages.
It’s the same story on the New York side, the DEC said.
“DEC Forest Rangers are highly trained and have supported and responded to forest fires throughout North America — including Canada, Montana, Idaho and California,” the agency said.
“They are as capable as any in the west.”
