The Highlands doesn’t have the terrain or conditions for the type of disaster that killed 101 people last year on the island of Maui in Hawaii. But that doesn’t mean flames fed by 30-foot kindling couldn’t spread out of control.
Some residents would see the smoke and assume it was morning mist. Others would smell it and wonder if they had missed an air-quality alert. Many would hear the sirens and spot the helicopter buzzing between river and woods, water sloshing over the sides of a 200-gallon bucket.
A few people would not realize anything was amiss until they received an automated text urging them to evacuate — assuming fire wasn’t blocking their escape.
Given last year’s soggy summer, the threat of a deadly wildfire may seem remote. New York doesn’t have the same risks as the bone-dry scrublands of California and Colorado or the boreal forests in Alberta and Quebec. But there are risks, especially with global warming rapidly changing conditions on the ground.
That’s because the Highlands is a perfect example of a “wildland-urban interface,” which the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) defines as a boundary or zone at which human development meets “vegetative fuels.”
Think of the unpaved backroads of Garrison, the homes tucked deep in the Nelsonville woods and the forest-bound neighborhood of Beacon Hills. Precisely what makes living in the Highlands so special — its proximity to expanses of protected nature — is also what could make a wildfire so dangerous.
The August wildfire on the island of Maui was the third-deadliest in U.S. history, with 101 deaths in Lahaina, a seaside town about the size of Beacon. Over the course of a few horrific hours, a brushfire started by a downed power line ripped through the town, fed by 70-mph winds.
Temperatures in Lahaina rose to 1,000 degrees — hotter than the surface of Venus — vaporizing victims. More than 7,000 residents abandoned their homes and 2,200 structures were destroyed or severely damaged. Four thousand vehicles were incinerated, leaving streaks of molten aluminum trickling down streets. Firefighters could not draw water from hydrants because the water system collapsed.
The Lahaina fire fed on changes in the landscape that took place over decades, both natural and manmade, such as agricultural irrigation systems that dried out the land. When plantations closed, the terrain was colonized by non-native, highly flammable grasses. Years of warnings about the risk of a devastating wildfire went ignored.
These types of changes have no analog in the Highlands. Our deciduous hardwoods are far less fire-prone than the grasses and conifers that cause so much trouble in Hawaii, Australia, Greece and Canada. While droughts seem to be getting more frequent and more intense, even the worst dry spells here pale in comparison to the desertification of much of the West.
Nevertheless, local emergency responders and forest rangers have concerns. Thousands of oak and ash trees, killed by invasive pests such as the emerald ash borer and the hemlock woolly adelgid, have become 30-foot-tall, 3-foot-thick kindling.
In September 2019, Hank Osborn of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, who grew up in Garrison, was crossing the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge when he spotted smoke rising above Sugarloaf Mountain.
Evan Thompson, the manager of the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, saw it around the same time as he drove south from Dennings Point in Beacon. Thompson and others went up the mountain, but they didn’t have the right tools. They came back the next day, along with rangers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which is responsible for fighting wildland fires.
The blaze, which likely started at an illegal campfire, had grown substantially overnight. State parks employees, DEC rangers and volunteers used heavy rakes, pickaxes, hoes and shovels to clear a 10-foot-wide firebreak around the base of Sugarloaf — a standard method meant to deprive the fire of fuel.
But after a dry summer, the fire burned into tree roots, raising the risk that it could emerge on the other side of the firebreak. That meant the team had to not only clear the surface but dig trenches — tough work on the slopes. Meanwhile, a DEC helicopter scooped water from the Hudson and dumped it on the flames.
The firebreak seemed to be working. But when the flames spread close to a cluster of homes along Route 9D on the northwest shoulder of the mountain, the firefighters had to “back burn,” intentionally burning everything between the break and the fire, a tactic designed to deprive the blaze of energy before it reaches the line.
The firefighters were able to stop the Sugarloaf blaze, largely because it was not windy. That was not true the next time a major fire broke out in the park, six months later, just as the coronavirus began running rampant.
March 9, 2020, was warm and gusty. That afternoon, the diesel locomotive of a Metro-North work train cast off embers that ignited the scrubby grasses near Breakneck Ridge. The flames scorched several parked cars, then ran across 9D and up the hillside.
Early spring can be as dangerous for fires as summer and fall. Bare branches mean the sun hits the leaf litter on the forest floor and dries it out. But because the ground is moist from snowmelt, spring fires have a hard time spreading underground into the roots and rarely grow hot enough to burn living trees.
Still, the Breakneck fire burned through nearly 300 acres before firefighters from 16 municipalities and state agencies contained it.
These incidents demonstrate the risks of wildfires but offer reassurance: They can be contained. A few factors worked to mitigate the damage, including that each fire occurred in a fairly accessible part of the park. While the Sugarloaf fire burned into the ground, making it harder to eradicate, the middling winds kept it from spreading. The Breakneck fire, though it spread rapidly, happened in the spring, when it wasn’t hot or dry enough to become an inferno.
Had the train ignited a fire in the late summer or fall, it might have been a different story, says Thompson.
In a statement, a Metro-North representative says that, after the Breakneck fire, the agency “took steps to prevent such incidents, including enhanced maintenance and testing of diesel locomotives.”
The day Tom Lucchesi started as chief of the Beacon Fire Department, in April 2023, a brushfire broke out in the woods behind Hiddenbrooke Park, near Fairview Cemetery, and began spreading west, toward the city.
Firefighters used axes and chainsaws to remove combustible material and build a fire line. They brought in four-wheelers and small trucks to put water on the blaze. They contained it, although not before it scorched scores of trees.
Had the flames escaped the perimeter, Lucchesi’s next call would have been to Joseph Pries, the DEC fire ranger for Dutchess and Putnam. Pries has nearly two decades of experience fighting wildland fires. Last summer, he and other local firefighters traveled to Quebec to help Canadian authorities battle the gargantuan blazes that clouded much of the East Coast (including the Highlands) in a pall of orange smoke.
On days when the fire risk is elevated because of high temperatures and low humidity, Pries travels with his flame-resistant Nomex firefighting pants already on. (The DEC must show up if a fire reaches 10 acres.) On the scene, Pries will survey the fire, check its direction and determine if there are particular areas to worry about. He’ll call in a helicopter if necessary and assign someone to coordinate with the pilot where to drop water.
“The fire season around here has gotten longer,” he says. “It used to be April to October, but now we’re seeing fires in November and December and February and March.” The potential for a major wildfire in the Highlands, under the right conditions, has risen, he says, but he offered assurances that the state has the resources, technology and training to keep people safe.
However, Pries acknowledged that, if several major fires broke out in New York State at the same time during a hot, dry season, it would be difficult for rangers to fight them all full force.
Wildfires need three ingredients: ignition, fuel and their version of ideal weather (hot, dry and windy).
Starting one can be as simple as discarding a shard of glass that focuses the sun on a dry leaf, or a piece of metal dragging along the road on a dry day, or a homeowner tossing ashes and a solitary ember from a wood stove into the compost pile, confident because the steel bucket is cool.
But in most cases, forest fires begin as campfires or leaf fires that were insufficiently extinguished or allowed to burn out of control. In 2009, New York enacted a statewide burn ban covering the spring (this year, it was March 16 to May 14) because the season’s conditions are so welcoming for fires. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, the ban has led to fewer fires and less acreage lost.
Unfortunately, you can’t fight the fuel. Throughout state parks and along major roads, scores of dead ash trees are evidence of the invasion of the emerald ash borer, a small but destructive beetle. Microbursts of intense wind also topple trees. Those dead trees represent “a jackpot” for fires, says Pries. Fires that feed on that fuel burn hotter, damaging the soil. A tree 2-to-3-feet around could burn for days, he says.
Fallen trees also make fires harder to contain because they become walls that block the path of responders.
Many of the trees attacked by invasive bugs are weak but still standing. That poses its own problem, says Evan Thompson. “A lot of times you don’t know a tree is rotten until you have a fire and you’ll see the tree smoking and burning.”
Some trees in the Highlands are not only fire-prone but fire-dependent. Pitch pines, for example, have resinous, waxy needles that combust easily. It’s a useful attribute, since the trees can only propagate and regenerate themselves when they burn hot enough to open their cones to release the seeds. Native grasses likely depend on fire, as well, since it returns nutrients to the soil.
In general, however, the mix of trees in the Highlands should be less conducive to large wildfires. When healthy and full of water, common hardwoods like oak, maple, beech and birch do not burn as easily as pines.
Enter invasive species such as privet, burning bush (euonymus alatus) and Japanese barberry, which are more flammable than native species and are changing the region’s fire profile. Dense stands of mountain laurel, built up over decades, provide “ladder fuels” that allow a fire to spread from the ground to the canopy, turning a smoldering brushfire into a “crown fire” that wind spreads from treetop to treetop.
Climate change is a factor, but not only because of worsening drought. Unusually wet seasons, such as the summer and fall of 2023, encourage more underbrush. Followed by a dry year, that growth turns into a potential bounty for flames.
The average temperatures in the Highlands are projected to rise dramatically in the coming decades, with heat waves coming more frequently and lasting longer. More water will evaporate than is provided by rain or snow, leading to more drought conditions. In the summer of 2022, water levels in the Cold Spring reservoir dropped by half, to about 50 percent, over a few months. The village instituted mandatory water restrictions, along with a ban on outdoor fires.
The region’s summer humidity can suppress fires. But the spring is often dry, making the seasonal burn ban all the more vital. A fire last spring near Travis Corners in Philipstown, which came within a few hundred yards of homes, was likely started by an illegal campfire set by a hiker on the Appalachian Trail.
Topography plays a role. Fires spread uphill because they heat the air and vegetation above them. Flames advance slower downslope. Fire is more likely to spread from town into the mountains than from the mountains into town. That means the chance that a fast-moving, catastrophic blaze sweeping down the slope of Mount Beacon into the city’s neighborhoods is low, though not impossible, given the gusty winds that often blow off the mountain.
More concerning to the park officials and firefighters is the encroachment of residential development into the woods, which could put homes at risk if the wind turns the wrong way on a hot, dry day. If a fire started on a mountainside in some parts of Philipstown, “it would be difficult to control,” says Thompson.
This series was made possible by contributions to ourSpecial Projects Fund.
Next week: Fire against fire, and escape
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Type: Investigative / Enterprise
Investigative / Enterprise: In-depth examination of a single subject requiring extensive research and resources.
