Fights against forest fires continue | News, sports, jobs

RINGWOOD, NJ – Firefighters battled small wildfires across the northeastern U.S. on Monday, including a blaze in New York and New Jersey that killed a park employee this weekend and postponed plans for Veterans Day.

A quarter inch of rain fell in a forested area along the border between the two states overnight Sunday into Monday, giving firefighters a brief respite.

The fire is one of several on the East Coast amid a lack of significant rainfall since September. A New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation Department employee assisting firefighters died Saturday when he was struck by a falling tree.

The fires raged on the East Coast while much larger wildfires raged in California.

Firefighters continued to make 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 Ventura County Mountain Fire has prompted thousands of residents to flee their homes and was 36% contained as of Monday. The size of the fire remains approximately 32 square kilometers. The Mountain Fire has destroyed more than 170 structures, most of them homes, officials said. The cause is being investigated.

In neighboring Nevada, authorities ordered the evacuation of hundreds of homes southwest of Reno and closed the main road to Lake Tahoe after a wind-swept wildfire broke out Monday and spread quickly through vegetation on mountain slopes.

About 3,000 people were told to leave, said Adam Mayberry, spokesman for the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District. It started to rain as local, state and federal crews arrived to battle the fire, Mayberry said.

Across the country along the New Jersey-New York border, crews worked to contain the 1.7-square-mile blaze dubbed the Jennings Creek Wildfire, although no evacuation order was issued, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service had been given.

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

To find and fight the fires, crews navigate a maze of country roads, lakes and steep hills amid dense forests. Trees there have shed most of their leaves on parched ground, masking a potential danger.

“Underneath the leaf litter that falls off the trees, that stuff is bone dry,” Bryan Gallagher, a forester with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said at a news conference. “So right now you’re getting a little rain that puts out the surface fire. But if it’s in the mud, it will stay there. It will smolder like a cigar until it is dry enough and then that fire can flare up again.”

A firefighting helicopter that could drop 350 gallons at a time was used to help fight the Jennings Creek fire. The National Guard has 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 until later in the month because of firefighting efforts, said Rudy Hass, the local Veterans of Foreign Wars for the U.S. commander.

“Many of the personnel currently involved in the fires are veterans themselves, and at this time we must keep them in our thoughts as they spend long hours, day and night, doing whatever they can to 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 who was killed Saturday while fighting a fire near Greenwood Lake in upstate New York.

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