The recent warm weather and dry conditions have triggered some brush fires around the state. New Jersey Forest Service Supervising Forest Firewarden Steven Holmes told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that today’s rain will give firefighters a break, but the Garden State dries out quickly because the soils are very sandy. He said residents should be cautious in the wilderness because humans are most often the cause of fires.
According to Holmes, the entire state has seen conditions that make fires more likely. “We were seeing Class 4 [very high] and Class 5 [extreme] days throughout most of this past week on the warmer days,” he said.
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The potentially dangerous conditions are made worse because the trees have not yet blossomed. “The sunlight can penetrate right down to the forest floor, dries it out very, very fast with the low humidities, the higher temperatures and the winds. That’s just a recipe for a wildfire,” Holmes said.
When the weather gets warmer, more people also venture into the outdoors, which also increases the fire risk, according to Holmes. “Almost all of our fires are started by people, whether intentionally or not intentionally — accidentally. We don’t have a great amount of fires that are started by lightning because usually when we have lightning we have rain with it,” he said. “Most of our fires are caused by humans so they just need to be very careful.”
The New Jersey Forest Service has 22 fire towers throughout the state that are manned when the woods are dry enough to burn, Holmes said. The organization has a few hundred pieces of equipment from backpack tanks to vehicles that can drive through the woods to fight fires. “We have bulldozers, we have helicopters. And then we also contract airplanes to drop water this time of year,” he said.
The organization is adequately staffed, according to Holmes. He said there are full-time employees as well as a couple thousand part-time firefighters. “When we have fires, we don’t usually have any problems getting manpower,” he said.
Holmes’ advice for residents is to be mindful of the risk of fires, especially with equipment and ashes from wood burning stoves. “Be very careful on the warm, dry, windy days,” he said. “Just be careful and keep it in your mind that wildfire does happen in New Jersey.”