A two-acre brush fire ignited in Brooklyn’s historic Prospect Park on Friday.

Dear Commons Community,

During the Fall dry season we are used to hearing about devastating fires in California and other parts of the American West but not in Brooklyn.  However, a serious brush fire broke out in Brooklyn’s historic Prospect Park on Friday night amid a drought across the northeast.

 A passerby reported the fire at about 6:40 p.m., and firefighters battled the blaze for more than three hours.

“Approximately two acres of extremely dry vegetation in the park ignited among heavy wind gusts,” the FDNY said in a statement.

The FDNY added that it’s been a “historically dry time for New York City” with more than 100 brush fires occurring in the area this month alone.

The fire was in an “extremely dense” part of the park, Tucker said during his news conference. No one was hurt in the fire, and no structures were nearby.

“Firefighters operated overnight to extinguish the blaze and remain on scene with a watch line as a precaution,” the FDNY added in its statement.

On Saturday, New York City and New Jersey were placed under red flag warnings and air quality alerts as nearly a half-dozen wildfires have continued to burn across New Jersey. A wildfire in the Pompton Lakes has grown to more than 160 acres, threatened 55 structures, and was 50% contained as of late Saturday afternoon.

This fall has also been the driest on record for New York City, with just 1.59 inches of rain in Central Park since Sept. 1.

Tony

New Jersey Wild Fire.  Courtesy of ABC News.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.