Wildfires Spread Across New Jersey and Connecticut: ‘No End in Sight’
The New York Times
Firefighters in the two states have battled hundreds of blazes during an unseasonably dry fall.
A spate of wildfires crisscrossing New Jersey prompted a statewide smoke advisory on Friday, as flames from one blaze in the Palisades, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, roared dangerously close to the nearby suburbs.
The 39-acre fire on the usually verdant cliffs of the Palisades was 30 percent contained by Friday afternoon, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. It had not caused any injuries, the fire service said.
Yet the blaze added to the hundreds of brush fires that have ignited in New Jersey and Connecticut in recent weeks as a regional drought deepens. Three major fires across more than 840 acres in southern New Jersey this week required evacuations and road closings.
“There’s no end in sight,” said Chief Bill Donnelly of the forest fire service.
Red flag warnings, which the National Weather Service issues on gusty days with low humidity so that people will be careful with possible fire starters like cigarettes and grills, have become common lately, and were renewed on Friday from Massachusetts to Delaware.
Some of the worst conditions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions are in New Jersey, where most of the state is in a severe drought or worse, and the threat of fire is ranked as “extreme,” the forest fire service’s highest rating.
