Drought, record warmth fuel historic wildfire risk in NJ

By Michael Sol Warren (NJ Spotlight) and Kaitlyn Trudeau (Climate Central)

This story was produced through a collaboration between NJ Spotlight News and Climate Central. John Upton (Climate Central) contributed reporting.

Oct. 27, 2024: At the scene of a 192-acre wildfire in Livingston, Essex County

Christopher Mullin, who has fought fires in the suburban town of Livingston for 38 years, including 21 years as its fire chief, says he’s never seen a fire in his community like the wildfire that broke out on a weekend in late October — a historically hot and dry month across New Jersey.

“We hear what happens in Arizona and California with thousands and thousands of acres burning — it becomes something of a TV thing,” Mullin said. “This thing being right in our backyards, it became reality real quick for a lot of people.”

The fire broke out on an unseasonably warm and windy afternoon, which analysis of data from a nearby weather station showed was ripe for wildfire. Wildfires are most likely to flare up during warm, dry and windy conditions — so-called fire weather. As heat-trapping pollution drives up temperatures globally, New Jersey is experiencing fire weather more frequently, including in the Livingston area when the so-called Industrial Fire broke out.

At the same time, new homes are being built in some of the areas most likely to burn.

“It just seems like things are getting hotter and drier for longer periods of time,” Mullin said. “In 38 years I’ve seen the community develop in areas that never had housing.”

The Industrial Fire ignited Oct. 26 in marshland left parched by the remarkable conditions that afflicted all of New Jersey throughout October. The fire threatened 48 buildings, forced the evacuation of six commercial buildings, closed parts of Route 10 and Eisenhower Parkway, and eventually grew to 192 acres before being contained on Sunday. Mullin doesn’t expect the flames to fully extinguish until heavy rain arrives.

Dozens of firefighters from the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, the Livingston Fire Department and other departments from nearby towns, aided by a helicopter capable of dropping 350 gallons of water at a time, were able to prevent any property damage.

“This was the biggest resource incident we’ve had,” Mullin said. “Normally our day-to-day operations include structure fires, car fires, all sort of stuff that we could handle.”

October was a historically dry month, with much of the Garden State seeing just a fraction of the rain that a typical October would bring. Drought conditions have spread to every corner of the state, with severe drought across South Jersey. Lingering summer weather, meanwhile, kept daytime highs in the 70s and 80s for much of the month, stalling the arrival of cooler fall days.

Oct. 31, 2024: The New Jersey Forest Fire Service fought a 40-acre wildfire in Evesham Township, Burlington County.

Warming nights help keep conditions dry and fires burning, which can stretch firefighting capacity by forcing firefighters to work through the night. Analysis of data from a weather station at Newark airport shows overnight average minimum temperatures in October have risen there by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970; nights at Atlantic City airport have warmed by twice that. The average minimum temperature for the first nine months across the Northeastern United States ranked as the hottest in 130 years.

“When conditions become this dry, the simplest things can start a wildfire,” Bill Donnelly, the state forest firewarden and chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, said in a statement last month. “In my 30-year career with the Forest Fire Service, I can’t recall a time when we faced such a prolonged period of dry weather with no relief in sight.”

The combination of hot weather, strong winds and dry conditions led to all 21 of New Jersey’s counties being considered to have “very high” or “extreme” fire danger as October progressed, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. State officials imposed escalating levels of fire restrictions, which have extended along with the remarkable weather into November. The Forest Fire Service said it responded to 353 wildfires statewide last month, which collectively scorched nearly 1,000 acres. The Industrial Fire that began in Livingston was the first of three blazes last month to be classified as major fires.

Tinderbox conditions across the Garden State continued into the early days of November. What might prove to be another fiery month began with the Craigmeur Lookout Wildfire — a major blaze in Rockaway Township that sparked on Halloween and burned through the weekend. As of Sunday evening, that fire was mostly contained, having burned more than 200 acres. Firefighters prevented the fire from causing injuries or damaging buildings. Analysis of nearby weather station data confirmed the presence of fire weather.

New Jersey’s wildfire season has historically arrived at the end of spring, peaking between April and May. That’s when the weather warms, winds pick up and the trees still lack canopies that shade forest floors. Fire risk typically increases again in the fall, between October and November, as trees drop their leaves.

Climate change has made Garden State weather less predictable and more risky. Record warmth is now experienced in all seasons. Extended dry spells have become more common. When storms arrive, they have more power, dumping more rain and snow and stirring stiff winds.

Wayne Wharton is the fire captain at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in the Pinelands, a mostly rural expanse of forests and other ecosystems home to a growing population. It’s a site with a unique fire risk — the military’s use of bombs and other weapons provide a constant source for igniting fires. Wharton said firefighters typically respond to more than 150 wildfires on base each year, and during his 34 years of experience, he’s noticed fire seasons growing longer.

“When I first started my career, our fire season was typically the first, second week of May,” Wharton told NJ Spotlight News earlier this year. “Now we’re pushing that as early as February, some years, where we’re starting to see significant fire. And as late as July and August.”

Fire season in New Jersey is now year-round

While much of the national media’s focus on worsening wildfire risks has been on the American West, where fires are more severe and common, the effects of climate change in Northeastern states are also exacerbating hazards in this region.

Analysis of weather station data shows parts of North Jersey now experience about 26 days with fire weather conditions each year on average — up from about 16 days in the early ’70s. Parts of South Jersey experience about 14 days of fire weather each year on average, up from 10 days 50 years ago.

New Jersey experiences most fire weather days during the spring, which is also when such conditions are most quickly becoming more common.

Firefighters were able to keep October’s numerous blazes under control and prevent any injuries or property damage. But as populations grow and residents move into new homes built in forests or at forest edges, fires can quickly become dangerous in the Garden State.

New Jersey is the most densely-populated state in the nation, and many residents live in what’s known as the wildland-urban interface — the zone where forests and developments mix. It’s the place where houses, businesses and other structures are most likely to be threatened by a wildfire.

There were 884,000 homes located in this wildland-urban interface in New Jersey in 2020, up from 716,000 in 1990, an increase of 167,000 vulnerable homes, according to an analysis of data maintained by a lab at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

The Industrial Fire burned in Essex County, which stretches from Livingston north to Fairfield and southeast to Newark, where the wildland-urban interface shrank slightly since 1990 while the number of homes within it grew by more than 4,000. In Morris County, which borders Livingston to its west, nearly 30,000 new homes were built in such risky territory during the same period.

That exposure brings added urgency to wildfire response in the Garden State.

“In New Jersey, a fire might start in an afternoon and we’re really working hard sending everything we can to that fire,” Trevor Raynor, an assistant division firewarden for the state Forest Fire Service, told NJ Spotlight News earlier this year. “These wildfires, we throw everything but the kitchen sink at them and we try and contain them quickly.”

The Flat Iron Fire, which broke out in Medford last year, is a prime example. That fire burned through the Highbridge subdivision, a residential part of town at the edge of the Pinelands. Firefighters moved quickly and were able to contain the fire to a relatively small size: just 210 acres.

Oct. 31, 2024: Detail of 40-acre wildfire in Evesham Township, Burlington County

In the critical hours at the start of the fire, firefighters rushed to keep the flames from torching homes. Local officials, initially unsure of how the fire would spread, told neighborhood residents to shelter in place, before eventually enlisting their help.

Rob Dovi, Medford’s fire chief and emergency management coordinator, recalled knocking on doors that night, asking residents to turn on any sprinkler systems they might have to help protect their properties. Some people even used their own leaf blowers to help firefighters get potential fire fuel away from houses.

“This one, while it was in a very bad area for us, ended up working out pretty well,” Dovi said. “Because of the wind speed wind direction that night, the direction the smoke was traveling and the fire direction, while it was in between three developments, it was pushing toward an undeveloped area of the township. So that kind of enabled us to leave [residents] where they were at.”

Dovi added that if the winds had shifted for the worse that night, firefighters were prepared to evacuate the neighborhood and Medford was ready to open a shelter. Images shared by the state Forest Fire Service from the Flat Iron Fire showed dramatic scenes of flames just feet from houses.

“The forest in that area, the makeup of the pine trees, all of those things produce a very combustible vegetative fuel that enables the fire to move very fast and very quickly,” Dovi said. “And now with all the homes that are in that area, that puts complications on the fire spread and fire movement.”

Deliberately lighting and then managing low-level fires, known as prescribed burns, is an essential tool for reducing wildfire risks by burning away leaf litter, small vegetation and other sources of flames from forest floors. In New Jersey, they’re often conducted over the winter.

State authorities have a goal to conduct 20,000 acres’ worth of prescribed burns each year, Raynor said. But safely carrying out prescribed burns requires cold weather and still air, and as climate change creates more risky days, reaching those numbers is becoming more difficult.

“Obviously it’s weather-dependent so our hands are tied,” Raynor said. “But we do have alternatives. We do use equipment to manage the fuels to mimic prescribed fire, so we might fell trees or mow the floor of the forest.”

Dovi said there was an uptick in efforts to conduct prescribed burns in Medford following the Flat Iron Fire, both from private landowners and from local government.

Dovi agrees that wildfire risk in Medford and the surrounding areas is now something that must be monitored year-round, rather than the historic peak season.

“From a fire chief’s perspective, I think it’s definitely something we have to plan for,” Dovi said.