Wildfires Spread Across New Jersey and Connecticut: ‘No End in Sight’

Firefighters in the two states have battled hundreds of blazes during an unseasonably dry fall.

A spate of wildfires crisscrossing New Jersey prompted a statewide smoke advisory on Friday, as flames from one blaze in the Palisades, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, roared dangerously close to the nearby suburbs.

The 39-acre fire on the usually verdant cliffs of the Palisades was 30 percent contained by Friday afternoon, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. It had not caused any injuries, the fire service said.

Yet the blaze added to the hundreds of brush fires that have ignited in New Jersey and Connecticut in recent weeks as a regional drought deepens. Three major fires across more than 840 acres in southern New Jersey this week required evacuations and road closings.

“There’s no end in sight,” said Chief Bill Donnelly of the forest fire service.

Red flag warnings, which the National Weather Service issues on gusty days with low humidity so that people will be careful with possible fire starters like cigarettes and grills, have become common lately, and were renewed on Friday from Massachusetts to Delaware.

Track Wildfires in the U.S.

See where wildfires are currently burning.

Some of the worst conditions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions are in New Jersey, where most of the state is in a severe drought or worse, and the threat of fire is ranked as “extreme,” the forest fire service’s highest rating.

New Jersey has battled 306 wildfires since Oct. 20, up from about 28 during the same period last year. Connecticut has responded to nearly 150 in the past month, after facing just five in 2023. This past October was the driest on record in New Jersey; Connecticut is experiencing its most parched stretch since 1905.

Besides a fire outside Hartford, Conn., that killed one firefighter and injured six others last week, there have been no deaths, injuries or major damage to buildings, according to state forest fire officials. Connecticut and New Jersey have imposed statewide burn bans, which restrict outdoor fires. In New York, municipalities are making their own decisions about such restrictions.

Wildfires in New York State have been fewer and smaller, with one of the largest this week spanning 12 acres near Ithaca, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Conservation. Although wildfires have been more contained in the state, New York City, which has had an unseasonably warm fall, is on high alert. There were several brush fires this week on Staten Island, the most forested borough. And on Friday evening, a brush fire broke out in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

The weather forecast does not offer much relief. A half-inch of rain was expected in the New York metropolitan region on Sunday, but that amount would do little to end drought conditions, said Brian Ciemnecki, a Weather Service meteorologist. Although weather patterns can shift, he said, mostly dry conditions are expected for at least another month.

In New York City, there are concerns about the water supply because all of the city’s reservoirs are in the drought zone, which encompasses the southeastern quarter of the state.

“We need six inches of rain to recover what we are missing,” Rohit Aggarwala, the city’s environmental protection commissioner, said this week.

Repairs being made to one of the aqueducts that connects to the Catskills region, the source of most of the city’s drinking water, mean that access to four major reservoirs has been cut off until the spring.

So far, there is an adequate supply of drinking water, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Department said. But a continuing drought would further deplete that supply, which is already at lower-than-usual levels.

The city has been under a drought watch since Nov. 2. New Yorkers are not required to conserve water under a drought watch, but they are urged to, Mr. Aggarwala said.

“If we can cut our water consumption by only five percent today, every 20 days we do that, that buys us another full day of water supply later on,” he said.

New York City’s last drought watch was more than 20 years ago.