New Jersey residents near Jennings Creek fire feared losing their homes

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Would the forest fire take away their house? Should they pack up and evacuate?

Those are the thoughts and fears expressed by some Ringwood and West Milford residents who live near the Jennings Creek wildfire that has been burning since Friday.

By Wednesday afternoon, as the winds calmed and firefighters said they had about 30 percent of the fire under control, residents began to relax a little.

The past few days have been tense, they said, as 5,500 acres of Sterling Forest burned in the Jennings Creek area, straddling the New Jersey-New York border. Half of the burned acres of forest are in New Jersey, near Lake Greenwood.

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The origin of the wildfire remains under investigation, said the New Jersey Forest Fire Department, which has battled the blaze with help from local firefighters since it started Friday evening. High winds on Monday and Tuesday made fighting the fire particularly difficult, authorities said.

On Wednesday, we spoke with residents in the Peter’s Mine area of Ringwood and the communities of Awosting and Forest Lake in West Milford, who said they finally left their homes to walk and run errands. They said there were some very tense moments of contact over the weekend into Tuesday, as alerts regularly went off on their phones to keep them informed of the fire.

“My neighbor had a duffel bag” in case of an evacuation, said Forest Lake resident Casey McLaughlin, adding that the situation seemed dicey all weekend.

The roads were blocked as she wondered whether she, too, should pack up her two dogs, cat and 3-year-old daughter, leave the area and head to her parents’ home in Corning, New York.

McLaughlin, a cybersecurity expert who works from home, told her California-based CEO that she was panicked. “I told my CEO that maybe you’re used to this…,” she said, leaving aside the fact that New Jersey residents are not used to dealing with wildfires. forest.

Dry conditions due to a lack of rain since late August are blamed for the wildfires that ravaged New Jersey last month.

McLaughlin and her neighbors, Diane Bossard and Richard Szura of the Awosting area, were walking Wednesday and said they had never seen anything like this before. Bossard and Sura have lived in the Hewitt neighborhood for at least 30 years.

“I didn’t sleep at all Saturday night,” Szura said. “I was thinking about what clothes I might need and what documents I should bring.”

All three said most of the time the smoke wasn’t great. When firefighters conducted a controlled burn Sunday, they said there was some smoke, but most of the smoke came after the wind change Tuesday.

Wildfire smoke chokes Ringwood

That was not the case for residents of Sheehan Drive and the west end of Peter’s Mine Road in Ringwood, who said the smoke from the wildfire was unbearable at times.

Kay Van Dunk and Sam McGill said the smoke was sometimes so dense they could only see a few hundred yards in front of them.

“We had sore throats after a few hours. We just closed our doors and windows and put on masks,” McGill said.

“They wanted to evacuate us,” Van Dunk said. The two men said they did not want to pack up their belongings and move to the temporary shelter that was being set up at St. Catherine of Bologna Catholic Parish in the commune.

Their neighbor, Rodney Mann, who suffers from COPD, a lung disease, said residents “were terrified all weekend.”

The smoke worsened his condition and he, too, planned to go to his son’s house in Jefferson.

“He said, ‘Dad, you can’t breathe,’” Mann said.

As winds whipped the wildfire into a frenzy, ash fell and covered homes and cars and there were fears the embers would ignite homes, some built in the 1860s.

“They’re so old you can’t get homeowners insurance,” Mann said.

Ringwood fire officials said the fire was burning just over the hill at times, but the crisis may have largely passed. However, without significant precipitation, less than an inch has fallen since late summer, the risk of wildfires remains high.

Mann and Wayne Mann, a Ramapough Nation leader, praised local, regional and New Jersey Wildland Fire Departments.

“They were angels,” Rodney said, adding that there were sometimes fire trucks stationed at the ends of their streets to protect their homes.

Wayne Mann, however, was unhappy with New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and the commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, who should have at least flown over the fire zone if they had not visited the fire sites.

“They should be ashamed of themselves, sitting in their cozy offices,” he said.

Wayne Mann was out Tuesday and Wednesday delivering masks, nearly 400 over two days, to Ringwood residents most seriously affected by the smoke.

Residents also received help from the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, which provided $1,700 worth of masks and water to first responders.

“The smoke engulfed their community,” said Elliott Ruga, director of policy and communications. He said the smoke put “all at risk, especially those with compromised health conditions.”

The state Wildland Fire Service is expected to release new information early this evening on the extent to which the fire has been contained.