New Jersey Forest Fire Service
The New Jersey Forest Fire Service is an agency within the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Founded in 1906 with a focus on wildland fire suppression and fire protection, the Forest Fire Service is the largest firefighting department within the state of New Jersey in the United States with 85 full-time professional firefighting personnel, and approximately 2,000 trained part-time on-call wildland firefighters throughout the state. Its mission is to protect "life and property, as well as the state's natural resources, from wildfire".
The New Jersey Forest Fire Service covers a primary response area of approximately 3.72 million acres comprising 77% of the state's land area and administered by three regional divisions. These divisions are divided into 29 sections, and further into 269 districts overseen by Section firewardens. All Firewardens are sworn law enforcement officers with authority pursuant to state law. These powers include broad authority to compel actions for fire prevention, to investigate a wildfire's cause, and exercise arrest and citation powers in matters involving criminal and civil liability. Firewardens are qualified incident commanders and direct operations of fire crews in suppression efforts. This primary response area includes the state's rural and suburban areas, as well as its public state parks and forests.
Because of the extent of suburban development in New Jersey, many of the state's residents live within a transition zone known as the wildland–urban interface which provides both increased challenges to fire suppression tactics and increased risk of fires causing damage to homes and property. In 2014, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service responded to 1,063 wildfire events that damaged 6,692 acres of wildlands. As a preventative measure, the service conducted controlled burns or prescribed burns on 15,326 acres statewide.
History
Establishment and development
Before the twentieth century, very little effort was made to control wildfires in New Jersey. According to reports of the state geologist, wildland fires in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey often burned 70,000 to 100,000 acres in any given year. In 1893, The New York Times reported "every year brings a reign of terror to the people living on and about the pine lands, and each year from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 worth of property is destroyed by fire". In an 1896 report, state geologist John Conover Smock estimated New Jersey's loss in timber at a million dollars annually over the previous twenty years and that forest fire was also "a source of great danger to the cranberry plantations". Shortly after his appointment as chief of the Division of Forestry, Gifford Pinchot, was commissioned to study forest fires and the best means for fighting them and to "show by actual measurements the loss to the State of New Jersey from forest fires". Pinchot submitted a report in which he recommended that the government make active efforts toward forest fire control to protect forests for the public benefit.The state legislature created the New Jersey Forest Fire Service with an act signed into law by Governor Edward C. Stokes on April 18, 1906. The law went into effect on July 4, 1906. The Forest Park Reservation Commission, created the year before also at Pinchot's recommendation, regarded the creation of the Forest Fire Service as that body's most important accomplishment of the year. Theophilius P. Price, of Ocean County, was appointed the state's first firewarden. The state asked 81 rural townships to appoint township firewardens and provided them with shovels. Only three fires were reported in 1906, and the entire cost for fire fighting from July through November that year was $5.30 for one fire in Shamong.
By 1908, the Forest Fire Service comprised 99 township wardens, 120 district wardens—respectively paid $20 and $10 annually—and 81 unpaid railroad wardens to prevent fires along railroad right-of-ways. In 1911, the Weeks Act passed in response to a deadly and costly 1910 fire season provided New Jersey sufficient funding to begin regular fire patrols to protect the watersheds of navigable streams. This was supplemented by the U.S. Postmaster General who ordered rural mail carriers to act as fire patrolmen in New Jersey and other states. Improvements in fire detection included the building of a system of fire observation towers, the first use of motor vehicles in fighting and patrolling efforts. Further expansion of fire protection was enabled by federal funds appropriated through the passage of the Clarke–McNary Act in 1924. From 1933 to 1942, during the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps improved New Jersey's system of state parks and forest for recreation and built firebreaks and fireroads within these tracts for fire prevention.
The agency's capabilities have been enhanced through the use of aircraft in fire suppression. At first, the Forest Fire Service used aircraft to observe and identify fires, beginning in 1927 under the efforts of state firewarden Leonidas Coyle. However, aircraft would not be used actively to suppress fires through aerial bombardment until 1961 when "a Stearman biplane operating out of Coyle Field managed to drop 5,220 gallons of retardant on various fires, at 100 gallons a pop".
Notable fire incidents
Because of nature of the fuels and vegetations within the Pine Barrens, the region has experienced many of the state's significant-impact fires that burned a large number of acres and property. In late April 1922, a fire that burned of Ocean and Monmouth counties also threatened the country estates of wealthy early twentieth-century American businessmen, John D. Rockefeller, Arthur Brisbane, and George J. Gould's estate known as "Georgian Court". This fire caused approximately $3,000,000 of damage in 1922 U.S. dollars. In two days, on April 20 and 21 1963, a fast-growing wildfire destroyed of land and consumed 186 homes and 197 buildings. A few residents were killed in the incident.Several fires in the last two decades have been connected to accidents at United States military's Warren Grove Gunnery Range in Ocean County's Warren Grove. In April 1999, Nearly of forest, wetlands, cedar swamp and cranberry bogs burned after a Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II from the 111th Fighter Wing plane dropped a "dummy" bomb more than a mile from its target. In June 2001, a forest fire occurred when an Air National Guard plane dropped a 25-pound practice bomb at the range. On May 15, 2007, flares dropped from an F-16 belonging to the 177th Fighter Wing set off a large wildfire that consumed more than 18,000 acres of the Pinelands and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents.
Several wildfire incidents have resulted in firefighter fatalities. Over four days in late May 1936, several fires torched of woods in the Pine Barrens, including a fire at Chatsworth in Burlington County. It is believed that shifting winds during a backfire operation took the lives of two fire wardens; and three men from the Civilian Conservation Corps' Company 225. On July 22, 1977, the Forest Fire Service and local fire departments responded to a fire burning in Bass River State Forest in Burlington County located north of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Extreme wind shifts and fire behavior caused units to be pulled out from the fire, but flames engulfed Engine Number 731, a specially equipped 10-wheel tank truck from the Eagleswood Fire Company resulting in the deaths of its four firemen, including a chief and assistant chief. A memorial to the fallen firefighters from the 1936 and 1977 Bass River Fires is located in the state forest along Greenbush Road in Bass River Township, New Jersey.
Organization
Mission
The New Jersey Forest Fire Service operates in accordance with its as mission defined in the General Forest Fire Act, and the succeeding Forest Fire Prevention and Control Act which were codified in Title 13, Section 9, of the New Jersey Statutes. It is the state government's policy:The law defines the word "forest" broadly, construing wildlands that are "forest, bushland, grassland, salt marsh, and any combination thereof." According to the agency's administrative boundaries map, the Forest Fire Service is the primary response fire service agency for wildfires in approximately 77% of the state's land area—3,719,638 acres. The remaining portion of the state, 1.1 million acres, comprises urban and densely populated suburban areas in which it is the agency of secondary response—called to assist local firefighting services. The Forest Fire Service aims to limit wildfires to under 2,000 events annually and control any property burned "to less than one half of one percent of the 3.15 million acres protected, or 15,750 acres."
Administration
The New Jersey Forest Fire Service is an agency within the state's Department of Environmental Protection. The Forest Fire Service's administrative offices are located in the 5 Station Plaza building, which houses some NJDEP offices at 501 East State Street in Trenton located one block north of New Jersey Transits Trenton Transit Center. The service has offices for each of its three divisions at Andover, New Lisbon, and Mays Landing.Pursuant to, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service is led by a "State Firewarden" serving under the NJDEP Commissioner who "shall administer and supervise the Forest Fire Service, cooperating agencies, and such laws as shall deal with the protection of forests, from wildfire". The current state firewarden is William J. Donnelly. Fifteen individuals have occupied the State Firewarden position since the establishment of the Forest Fire Service in 1906.
Regional divisions and districts
The Forest Fire Service operates over three regional divisions, each administered by a division firewarden. Division A covers all of northern New Jersey north of the Raritan River. Division B covers central New Jersey south of the Raritan River but north of the Mullica River. Division C covers southern New Jersey south of the Mullica River. Each Division is partitioned into sections of approximately.There are 29 sections throughout the state. Each section is further divided into districts of to for a total of 269 districts statewide. Each section is administered by full-time section forest firewarden and district within those sections is overseen by a part-time district firewarden. Firewardens obtain qualifications as incident commanders for the roles and responsibilities as defined under the National Incident Management System as a part of the Incident Command System. They are also experienced firefighters who have additional qualifications as a crew boss or training in for specialized crew work and tactics.
| Division | Station Location | Air Operations | Counties covered | Primary Response Acres | Secondary Response Acres | Total Acres |
| Division A | 240 Main Street Andover Borough | Aeroflex–Andover Airport Kittatinny Valley State Park Andover Township | Bergen, Essex, Hunterdon, Mercer , Middlesex , Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union, Warren | |||
| Division B | 103 Shinns Road Brendan T. Byrne State Forest New Lisbon | Coyle Field Woodland Township | Burlington, Mercer , Middlesex , Monmouth, Ocean | |||
| Division C | 5555 Atlantic Avenue Mays Landing | Strawberry Field Mays Landing | Atlantic, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem |