By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — An elite team of FDNY fire marshals, fire protection inspectors, and drone operators is being pulled together to combat the stunning rise in brush fires across New York City exacerbated by the area’s ongoing drought, the Daily News has learned.
The new task force will be dedicated to coordinating responses to brush fires and investigating each blaze to determine how it started and how similar ones could be stopped before they start, Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker said Sunday as he announced the new team.
“By creating this task force, we are taking real action to prevent brush fires from occurring, putting protocols in place to keep our members safe while they are in the field, and working to identify the causes of these fires after they happen to keep New Yorkers safe in the future,” Tucker said as he again called on residents to be mindful of sparking brush fires as the drought continues.
As of Thursday, firefighters have responded to 271 brush fires across the city in the first two weeks of November, from easily extinguishable flare-ups to massive blazes such as the one that destroyed 4 acres of Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park on Wednesday.
Burning trees collapsed around firefighters as they fought the blaze through the night, lugging hose lines from the nearby Harlem River.
Earlier in the month, firefighters in Brooklyn battled back-to-back blazes sparked in Prospect Park, which will need several seasons to recover, members of the Prospect Park Alliance said.
The number of brush fires this year was significantly higher than in previous years, FDNY officials said, noting that, over the past three years, firefighters usually battle about 200 brush fires during the entire month of October, considered one of the driest months in New York City.
This year the city has seen more brush fires in half the time. Nearly a third of them occurred in the Bronx, FDNY officials said.
Brush fires and wildfires have destroyed more than 8 million acres of land across the U.S. this year, according to the Interagency Fire Center.
Members of the FDNY’s new task force will respond to brush fires in the five boroughs and help organize a plan of attack for the different FDNY companies based on wind patterns, witness accounts, and eye-in-the-sky information from drones flown overhead.
Most importantly, the team will try to determine what sparked the blaze and how it spread so quickly — data that will be pivotal in finding ways to prevent similar brush fires from happening again, Tucker said.
Nearly all wildfires are sparked by humans, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. Pitching lit cigarettes, burning debris, and other neglectful actions can easily spark a massive blaze fueled by dry leaves and high winds.
The task force will create risk-assessment models, identify spots where brush fires could flare up, and push prevention tips.
At the same time, they’ll be running training and preparedness exercises for rank-and-file firefighters that simulate real-life brush fires to enhance coordination with radios, mobile apps, drone feeds, and test equipment and tactics, said FDNY officials.
The task force will also be sharing their findings with the NYPD, the city’s Office of Emergency Management, and the Parks Department so they can put together plans to limit the chances of other brush fires from erupting.
As the drought continues, the FDNY is imploring smokers to make sure they properly dispose of their cigarette butts instead of simply flicking them away, and construction crews who do “hot construction activities” such as welding shouldn’t do their work near dry grass or leaves, FDNY officials said.
Last weekend, Mayor Adams banned grilling in city parks to prevent possible brush fires as the drought continues.
“We need the public to remain vigilant,” Tucker said Wednesday.
Anyone wishing to learn more about preventing brush fires can log on to FDNYsmart.org.
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