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After a touch-and-go weekend that saw the wildfires near Greenwood Lake that were under control suddenly come roaring back to life on a windy Sunday, authorities now say the Jennings Creek wildfires are back under control. The winds finally died down late Sunday, and fire fighters spent much of Sunday night and Monday morning bringing to heel the infernos that torched the border of New York and northern New Jersey. This is the same blaze that cost 18-year-old fire fighter Dariel Vazquez his life last week when he was crushed under a falling tree; flags in New York will be at half-staff as his funeral happened Monday morning. Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus appeared on the WOR Morning Show to praise the efforts of firefighters valiantly trying to save lives and property under harrowing conditions.
“I’m looking at a beautiful sight right now,” Neuhaus told host Larry Mendte. “I’m looking at heavy-lift US Army helicopters dumping water on this mountain. They’re dealing with heavy smoke, and it’s really tough terrain. This is like Afghanistan. It’s like rock, and it takes 45 minutes to get to the fire scent on foot up a mountain with your hand tools…[plus] we have drones doing surveillance now 24/7 around the perimeter, so if there’s pop-ups, we can send ground troops to them. And then, we have an Air Boss here…where we can dump this water onto the hot spots. It’s incredible.”
Officials thought they had the blaze finally under control on Saturday, but Neuhaus says wind and drought conditions combined Sunday morning to change that. “It was a night and day difference between Saturday and [Sunday] evening. It was a 20-mile-plus wind which pushed a lot of this fire and some of the local officials were a little nervous. We did a voluntary evacuation. Nobody stayed; it looked like hell on earth was coming your way.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images