Firefighters have responded to more than 200 brush fires in the past two weeks, including nearly two dozen in Van Cortlandt Park in The Bronx, as the city reckons with an historically dry and fiery season.
By Jonathan Custodio, and Max Rivera
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- The Roosevelt Island Daily News
FDNY members responded to a brush fire in Inwood Hill Park, Nov. 13, 2024. Credit: Screengrab via Mark Levine/X
A brush fire in Upper Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park began at around 3 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the FDNY reported it had responded to a record 229 brush fires citywide in the last two weeks — surpassing the 200 fought by firefighters over the full month of October last year.
As nearly two dozen FDNY and NYPD vehicles and dozens of first responders were near a soccer field just west of the park’s nature center at around 6 p.m., a FDNY lieutenant said that firefighters would be battling the blaze for at least a few more hours, pointing to several hotspots in heavily wooded areas.
Firefighters were feeding water from the adjacent Spuyten Duyvil Creek to quench the flames said the lieutenant, who wasn’t authorized to speak to the press. He added that the department could use more responders to help stretch hose-lines and more equipment like brush-fire trucks and portable tanks during the historic drought.
Dispatch transmissions from firefighters revealed a complicated and arduous operation to put out hard-to-reach pockets of fire throughout the park, with the response initially divided into two “boxes,” allocating 80 firefighters and EMS personnel from 15 units to two separate command structures in an attempt to divide and conquer.
Firefighters deployed drones from the department’s Command Tactical Unit and, nearly an hour into the operation, chiefs on the scene summoned specialized brush fire units and two fire boats to aid in the response.
“We have several acres on fire, and it’s starting to take off,” reported Ladder 56 earlier in the afternoon while responding to the blaze in Inwood Park from Webster Avenue in The Bronx.
Video footage posted by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine showed flames dotting either side of a rock-lined pathway.
While FDNY fights hundreds of brush fires a year — not to be confused with wildland or wild fires —the department’s specialized brush fire unit, which consists of eight 24-hour companies strategically located across the city, responded to just 12 brush fires last year according to unofficial data tracked by fdnewyork.com, an FDNY fan site.
Those units, said FDNY spokesperson Clare Bourke, have vehicles equipped with a booster tank, medical equipment, portable de-watering pump and chain saw that “are especially suitable for operations on fires remote from roadway or sources of water supply.”
At least one fire company told Manhattan dispatchers that hydrants were in short supply in their corner of the leafy, wooded park with a terraced hillside abutting the Hudson River and suggested drafting water from the river — a tactic fire engines use only on rare occasions when hydrants are unavailable and a large body of water is close by.
As the blaze grew to a third alarm Wednesday evening, firefighters were still struggling to find “positive water sources,” according to a progress report given by a high-ranking chief on the scene to Manhattan dispatch.
The city’s engine companies remain staffed with one fewer firefighter across all but 20 companies due to Bloomberg-era cuts that Mayor Eric Adams has yet to fully restore.
An unofficial study conducted by retired Deputy Chief Vincent Dunn revealed engine companies with a fifth firefighter nearly halve the time it takes to stretch hose lines. The so-called fifth firefighter is critical during prolonged operations, extreme weather conditions and particularly challenging emergencies.
‘We Could Smell It From Our Apartment’
The recent brush fires over a historically dry stretch included two separate ones over four days in wooded parts of the Bronx’s sprawling Van Cortlandt Park that have local residents and officials concerned about what could be coming before significant rain finally arrives.
“Remarkably dry conditions in October and so far in November have resulted in a historic amount of brush fires over the last two weeks,” FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker said in a statement on Wednesday, hours before another brush fire erupted in Inwood Hill Park. “Due to a significant lack of rainfall, the threat of fast spreading brush fires fueled by dry vegetation and windy conditions pose a real threat to our members and our city.”
The city’s advisories began to reach New Yorkers last week, as they got much more direct warnings from their senses.
“We could smell it from our apartment” a block away, recalled Xhoana Ahmeti, 32. “We went for a walk on Friday night, and even on Friday night, we were like ‘What is that?’”
How to Keep Your Apartment’s Air Clear of Wildfire Smoke
- Keep doors and windows closed to prevent smoke from getting inside. You can stuff rags, towels or sheets to block air coming from the sides of windows or bottom of doors.
- Avoid cooking with gas stoves, as burning methane indoors releases the pollutants nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, which are harmful to health.
- If it’s not feasible to make the air in your whole apartment clean, create a designated clean air room.
- Invest in a high-quality air filter, such as one rated MERV-13 or HEPA.
Read our full guide on filtering dirty air here.
Twenty-five units of 106 FDNY responders tackled a second-alarm fire in Van Cortlandt Park near East 233rd Street and the Major Deegan Expressway on Nov. 4, taking them about five hours to control, according to Bourke, the FDNY spokesperson.
“I smelled it, and it reminded me of what happened last year with Canada,” said one parkgoer in Van Cortlandt, declining to give their name. They said they were walking in the park last week, after the second-alarm fire. “When I did the second lap, I thought maybe it was like a small fire, kids playing, you never know. The second lap I did, it got a little foggier and smelled a little bit stronger. And I was like, ‘You know what? Let me just get out of here.’”
The day after Ahmeti’s walk, firefighters responded to a second significant brush fire in the 1,146 -acre park, the third largest in the city. Sixty firefighters from 12 units rushed to contain a five-acre fire near the stables, which took them about 90 minutes with no injuries reported.
Bourke told THE CITY that of the 67 brush fires that happened in The Bronx in the last two weeks, the most of any borough, 22 of them were in Van Cortlandt Park.
Since wildfire season began on Oct. 17, there have been 378 brush fires citywide, Bourke said — compared to 174 brush fires over the same period of the previous three years combined.
“This is exactly the reason why as a city we need to ensure we are investing in our municipal services,” local Councilmember Eric Dinowitz (D-Bronx) told THE CITY, noting that Mayor Eric Adams campaigned for mayor in 2021 on a promise he’s yet to fulfill to roughly double parks funding to 1% of the city’s budget.
Adams announced on Saturday that “effectively immediately, we are prohibiting grilling in our parks,” citing a two-alarm fire in Prospect Park the night before, on Nov. 8. “We need all New Yorkers to take commonsense steps to prevent brush fires,” he added.
‘We’re in Such a Drought’
Burn marks and tumbled trees were visible this week along the Cross Country Trail traversing the northern part of the park, near the Riverdale Stables.
One regular parkgoer told THE CITY that they’d seen firefighters bringing in their hoses through an entrance near the stables to contain the fire as it blazed across five acres on Saturday.
“The fact of the matter is we’re in such a drought,” said Debra Travis, the parks committee chair for Community Board 8 in The Bronx, which includes Van Cortlandt Park. “We normally plant in the fall and the ground was ridiculously dry so it was really a struggle to keep our plants watered.”
“If you have good forest management, then you’re able to do what you can do. PEP” — the officers who patrol parks — “is severely understaffed,” Travis continued. “They would be the first line of defense for things like barbecuing.”
In the short term, said Assemblymember Jeff Dinowitz, “We just gotta hope we get some decent rain.” After that, he said, it’s a question of resources:
“Our parks are severely underfunded and the city, through one administration after another, has never funded parks.”
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