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Local brush fires
I came home to a rather ominous black cloud floating over my house from about 5 miles away, and someone just posted on FB that they're calling for trailers because they need to evac 200 horses ASAP. Where they plan to put 200 horses, I don't know. I'ma be pissed if I get evac'd during The Voice.
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Re: Local brush fires
Ugh, I loathe wildfires. We have had horse areas evac'd before, so I am guessing they probably have a farm/area that they can be held in temporarily like they do here.Then again we have a fire SEASON, so people have to think about those things.
Hope they get the horses out safely and the fire under control before you have to worry about it!
Huh, it's pretty big....more than half the size of the 1995 fires already. DH and I both managed to skirt the road closures. We're juuuust outside the zone so far. My IL's are juuuust outside the zone on the other side. Vaguely interesting details bolded below.
From Newsday:
Homes in Riverhead and Manorville have been destroyed by raging brush fires that have consumed at least 2,000 acres of woods and vegetation as strong winds blew flames, igniting grass and forest in tinderbox-like conditions, Suffolk officials said.
As of 6 p.m., the brush fire was still out of control, with swathes of Manorville, Ridge and other communities burning in what is considered a single inferno, a Suffolk fire communications official said. The busiest spot at that point was Wading River Road and River Road as the fire moved southeast, he said.
As least 10 homes in Riverhead have been burning, and a mandatory evacuation of parts of Riverhead started 5 p.m., with residents relocated to the Riverhead senior center on Howell Avenue, said county spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter.
Michael Wiwczar, an honorary chief with the Wading River Fire Department, said that he had witnessed a home on Schultz Road in Manorville completely destroyed by flames. He said they ripped right through the side of the house.
"I've never seen anything this big," Wiwczar, who has 54 years of firefighting experience, said of the blaze. "It's just a tremendous fire."
The area near Line Road, just above Robert Cushman Murphy County Park, was being hit hard, he said. Several homes in the area were burning as of early evening, Wiwczar said.
Fire agencies were asked to go first to the staging area at the Suffolk Fire Academy in Yaphank and get their assignments, with priority going to the spraying down of residential homes in the path of the inferno, she said.
Several firefighters had minor injuries as flames surrounded two fire trucks at one point, and they abandoned both vehicles, Baird-Streeter said.
The fires have burned land on and off BNL (Brookhaven National Lab) property as of 4:45 p.m., mostly on park land, said Michael Bebon, deputy director for operations at the Upton-based laboratory. The fire started about 2:30 p.m., he said, and at least nine fire departments, including the lab's own, were on the scene as the inferno moved east.
As a precaution, the lab evacuated two employees from the sewage treatment plant on the northern border, but said the complex housing of its well-known relativistic heavy ion collider was not in imminent danger.
"The wind direction, which is expected to be sustained, is out of the west, pushing the fire away from the heavy ion collider," Bebon said. "Winds can always change, although that's not predicted until later in the weekend."
A number of far-away fire departments have been called to battle the fires. One report said a fire truck had been abandoned, surrounded by fire, and the county fire rescue official said authorities were trying to determine what happened to the firefighters.
On Manorville Road in Ridge, it was a mad scramble to escape homes as flames approached just before 6 p.m.
Marcia Lucas ran down the street, toting a backpack and shouting, "I'm getting the hell out of here!"
"It's extremely scary," the evacuated resident continued. "I've been living here a long time and I've never seen this."
A caravan of fire engines approached the street where bright orange flames swallowed trees and moved perilously close to homes. As residents fled, firefighters suited up amid thick smoke to attack the blaze.
"We're going in to try to knock down the head of the fire before it reaches the back of these homes," said First Lt. Ralph Lettieri of the Hagerman Fire Department in East Patchogue.
The fire covers approximately 300 acres on the Brookhaven National Laboratory site, lab officials said.
Firefighters from several departments converged in the parking lot of Millennium Gas on Middle Country Road in Ridge, looking exhausted as they stopped off for a quick breather.
A Ridge firefighter, who declined to provide his name, said that he had just witnessed a structure about a one-half-mile from the gas station get overtaken with flames. He said areas of Manorville were being evacuated, the blaze marched northwest into Ridge.
"It's very, very rough in there," said one Mastic Beach firefighter, who also declined to provide his name. "The smoke conditions are bad. The wind is just making everything harder."
The evacuation zone is bordered by Grumman Avenue on the north, Edward Avenue on the east side, Peconic Avenue to the south and Wading River Manorville Road to the west, Baird-Streeter said.
Fire units countywide have been asked to stage at the Suffolk Fire Academy in Yaphank.
A Suffolk County police helicopter was up in the air trying to find the perimeter of the fire, police said.
Residents are urged to stay off the high-occupancy vehicle lanes of the eastbound Long Island Expressway, officials said, as fire authorities race to the fire scene. Eastbound Route 25 was closed east of William Floyd Parkway, police said.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone was going to the Command Post in Ridge, officials said. On News 12, he asked county residents to refrain from calling 911 because the system was getting overloaded. He said officials are evaluating whether local evacuations were necessary.
"This is an evolving situation," he said.
Bellone's county website said firefighters from 109 fire and rescue departments in Suffolk County have responded to the scene of the brush fire, and 15 additional departments from Nassau County are en route.
The website said a mandatory evacuation is being sought by the Riverhead Police Department for the area north to Grumman Avenue, east to Edwards Avenue, south to Peconic Avenue, and west to Wading River Manor. The Riverhead Senior Center, 201 Howell Ave., Riverhead, has been established as an emergency shelter, it said.
LIPA has cut power to a major transmission line running through the area.
"We were asked to de-energize our transmission line at the request of the fire marshall," spokesman Mark Gross said. "We have switched load to another line so no customers are impacted."
There were unconfirmed reports of smoke inhalation and burn injuries to some firefighters.
Help was being pulled from as far east as Orient and East Marion on the North Fork. The odor of smoke lingered in the air out to exits 70 and 71 of the Long Island Expressway.
The brush fire in Ridge was originally called in from Route 25A and Deerfield Drive at 2:45 p.m., police said.
Mid-march to mid-May historically marks the period of highest fire risks across the state. From 2000 to 2009, New York's fire departments responded to an average of 2,300 wildfires each year from March 16 to May 14, according to statistics. That represents about 46 percent of all wildfires for the year.
Diane Juergens, a Ridge resident, said she encountered the blaze as she returned home from attending classes around 3 pm. "It looked like a volcano exploding," said Juergens, whose husband Chris has been kept from home by one of several roadblocks around the neighborhood. "The plume of smoke in the air was just amazing."
Juegens said the area has been inundated with vehicles. "It looks like a war zone, with firetrucks and helicopters," she said. There was a fire just to the north some 20 years ago but "this is the closest a fire has ever come to here."
Bill Korbel, News 12 meteorologist said the conditions left by recent weather had set the stafe for the blaze.
"The conditions all winter long have been very dry, less than one third of the normal rainfall this year and 1/2 inch of rain for the past six weeks or so, March into April," he said.
"Added to that was today there were very strong winds, gusting up to 40 mph. And the air is extraordinarly dry. Relative humidity was 15 percent, more like you'd find in the southwest. It would be 40 percent here on a normal spring day.
"This is extraordinaly dry weather. That drought allows fuel to dry up and be more flammable. Strong winds spread it, just pick up and blow embers and start other fires."
The forecast overnight calls for winds to subside a bit, probaly cut in half, to 10 to 15 mph. "The first showers could come later Tuesday or Wednesday. There could be showers and the humidity will be up a bit. That should help them (firefighters) knock it down a bit," Korbel said.
The blaze in Ridge draw immediate comparisons to the so-called Sunrise Fire of 1995.
The conflagration began on the afternoon of Aug. 24 near the eastern campus of Suffolk County Community College in Riverhead. It was named for the highway it jumped as it burned across a large section of the Pine Barrens. It was among the state's largest brush fires in a century. Scientists who conducted aerial surveys say about 3,200 acres of the 100,000-acre pinelands burned but no lives or homes were lost.
The blaze was officially contained only after four days, as firefighters struggled to keep up with the wind and the flames, which constantly changed direction. Investigators never determined the exact cause but said it appeared to be intentionally set.
Besides firefighters from across Long Island and federal "hot shot" teams from around the country, the 106th Air National Guard unit's crews dropped baskets of water from helicopters.
With Patrick Whittle, Bill Bleyer, Stacey Altherr, Emily C. Dooley, Gary Dymski, William Murphy, Yancey Roy, Kevin Deutsch and Patricia Kitchen
"The wind direction, which is expected to be sustained, is out of the west, pushing the fire away from the heavy ion collider," Bebon said. "Winds can always change, although that's not predicted until later in the weekend."
Sounds scary! Stay safe. And I am a paranoid person, but when there is ever a fire close to us I at least make a mental note of what I need/want to bring in case of evac. The one time we did have to evacuate we made sure to get pictures, the computer and a few sentimental items (and of course the pets lol).
omg! That sounds so scary, stay safe.
I had no idea we lived so close! My FB was filled with those horse emergency messages as well.