‘Dante’s inferno’: Wildfires scorch New York amid historic drought

For millions of New Yorkers in the concrete jungle and beyond, the spate of wildfires at their backdoor was unthinkable.

Brooklyn, New York – An incinerated, rusty microwave, the charred skeleton of a lawn chair, a pile of melted clothes, and singed scraps of the Holy Bible sat ominously on the forest floor, alongside a smattering of scorched pinecones.

Under a canopy of blackened tree trunks, in a small clearing in the northwest section of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Thursday, the apocalyptic aftermath of a fire that engulfed a homeless encampment in the park’s woods was still on display. A fire truck slowly circled the perimeter of the park while a squirrel scampered amongst fallen autumn leaves and parched earth.

Nearly a week after the brush fire, 26-year-old Brooklyn media arts teacher Jake Catalanotto could be seen curiously combing the site of the fire – roughly the size of two football fields – documenting the destruction on his camera. The lifelong Brooklyn resident was unnerved by what he saw.

“There are burned-out husks of electronics and cans and spray cans, mattresses,” Catalanotto, 26, told Al Jazeera as he described the seared hellscape. “A little one of those things that you put over a fire to cook over it. Pots and pans.”