(Bloomberg) -- As dusk set in over Manhattan on Tuesday, a shimmering line of fire slithered along a grassy hillside next to one of the city’s busiest highways. Blazes like this one — and the roar of fire engines and helicopters coming to assist — have become a regular feature of life in New York City in recent weeks amid its most intense bout of dry weather in more than 150 years.
As the flames crept closer, the staff of the Morris-Jumel Mansion, just off Harlem River Drive in Washington Heights, began to get worried. The historic estate-turned-museum is the oldest surviving home in Manhattan, built in 1765, and is made of wood.
Someone ran to a shed at the rear of the property to find the hose that had been stashed away for the winter. With the smell of smoke heavy in the air, workers sprayed the outside wall closest to the park where the fire was spreading, hoping a good soaking would prevent stray embers from setting the home ablaze.
The strategy worked. Firefighters eventually got the flames under control, and the home survived unscathed. “They were heroes,” Catherine Hughes, the museum’s executive director, said of the workers who sprung into action.
Rain showers early Thursday morning did little to dispel concerns about the drought that’s raised the risk of wildfires in some of the country’s most densely-populated areas. Such blazes have long been a seasonal fact of life in Los Angeles and parts of the arid Western US, but this month, smoke has also billowed over Midtown Manhattan and Queens, drifting east from a 5,300-acre blaze on the New Jersey border that claimed the life of an 18-year-old parks worker. In New York City, firefighters are battling exhaustion as they deploy to a record-breaking number of brush fires across the five boroughs, many of which have occurred deep within the city’s parkland and on difficult-to-access embankments.
“It’s very dangerous and difficult on the body,” said John Sarrocco, the fire department’s assistant chief of operations. He said that while New York City wildfires weren’t unheard of in the past, the number of blazes and their pacing are unprecedented this year. “It’s the volume of brush fires we’ve been having recently, with no rain, which creates extremely dry conditions.”
So far, none of the New York City blazes have spread to any buildings, but the fire in Washington Heights was a disturbing near-miss. New York’s fire department responded to 271 brush fires from Nov. 1 to Nov. 14, Sarrocco said, setting a two-week record. Some of the gems of the city park system — Fort Tryon Park and Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx — have now experienced fires significant enough to disrupt the natural ecosystems and terrify nearby neighbors.
“I can’t remember a period of drought like this, where the lack of precipitation goes on for so long,” said Rich Otto, a meteorologist with the US Weather Prediction Center who grew up on Long Island. “It doesn’t really ring a bell in my head.”
In fact, it’s unprecedented at least within the last 155 years. That’s how long rainfall records have been kept at Central Park, which just experienced its driest three-month period in known history. Just over 2 inches (5 centimeters) of rain have fallen since Aug. 20, according to the US National Weather Service. Otto said levels of 12 to 13 inches would be more typical in that span.
New York City needs about eight inches of precipitation to end the drought, according to Otto, ideally distributed in moderate storms over the next few months to help the water better soak in. Three to eight inches of snow could fall Thursday in some of the upstate counties that supply New York City with drinking water, according to the National Weather Service, which could help water levels through the reservoir system. Currently, it’s at 60% capacity instead of the 80% mark typical for this time of year.
The city has revoked open permits for fireworks and other public displays of open flames in parks. Crews are removing “known tree hazards” that are vulnerable to fire along park paths and trails, Gregg McQueen, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, said in an email, and they plan to plant new trees to replace mature ones that have been lost and restore vegetation this upcoming spring.
For now, the fire department has added new brush fire reserve units to patrol parks and other tracts of land littered with dry pine needles and dead leaves in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Sarrocco said. Drones will be deployed to active fires to help identify hot spots and direct firefighting efforts, too.
But other than that, there’s little the city’s fire crews can do but wait for the next call to come in and try to rest up. Brush fires typically have no water source nearby, so that means crews have to park their engines as close as they can and carry in fire hoses on foot. When the hoses are fully loaded with water, Sarrocco said, they become unwieldly and a struggle to move. A single length weighs about 80 pounds — and for some of the recent brush fires, crews have unspooled 15 to 20 lengths, versus the two or three they might need for an apartment or car fire.
“These operations are so physical in nature that units need to be relieved on a consistent basis, constantly bringing more and more firefighters to the scene,” Sarrocco said.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.