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    Man Charged With Arson in Vast New Jersey Wildfire

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    A 19-year-old was accused of setting wooden pallets on fire and leaving before the fire was extinguished, sparking what could become the largest blaze in the state in nearly 20 years.An unextinguished bonfire was the cause of one of the largest wildfires in New Jersey for almost 20 years, officials announced on Thursday, and a 19-year-old was accused of sparking the blaze.Joseph Kling, 19, of Waretown, in Ocean Township, has been charged with aggravated arson and arson in connection with the fire.Mr. Kling, who had left the bonfire unattended in the Forked River Mountain Wilderness Area, in Ocean County, was taken into custody at the Waretown police headquarters and is now in the Ocean County Jail.The wildfire, which was first spotted from atop a fire tower in Cedar Bridge on Tuesday morning, has grown rapidly from about 20 to 15,000 acres over three days, shutting down a parkway, destroying a commercial building and affecting air quality from the Pinelands area, in southern New Jersey, to New York City. It is about 50 percent contained, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.Nearly 85 percent of wildfires in the United States are caused by people, according to the United States Forest Service. Risky human activities include unattended campfires, burning debris or discarded cigarettes. The abnormally dry conditions in the southern part of New Jersey provided ample fuel for the unattended bonfire to spread rapidly, officials said. More

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      Wildfire Burns in 3,200 Acres of New Jersey Forest Area

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      The fire in the Pine Barrens led to the evacuation of 3,000 residents and the shutdown of a stretch of the Garden State Parkway.A fast-moving wildfire in the Pine Barrens section of southern New Jersey spread to 3,200 acres of the heavily forested area by the evening, prompting the shutdown of a 17-mile stretch of one of the state’s busiest highways, the authorities said.The smoky blaze, in Ocean County, threatened at least 1,320 structures, forced the evacuation of 3,000 residents of Ocean and Lacey Townships and caused the Garden State Parkway to be shut down between exits 63 and 80, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said in a statement.Embers from the fire, which began Tuesday morning, jumped over the parkway at about 6 p.m., sparking several small blazes near a defunct nuclear power plant known as Oyster Creek, according to state officials. The plant, owned by Holtec International, shut down in 2018 and is being decommissioned.Patrick O’Brien, a Holtec spokesman, said the fires closest to the facility had been “completely and safely extinguished.”Even if a blaze were to reach an area where spent nuclear material is stored in secure casks, it poses no risk, according to Mr. O’Brien and Shawn M. LaTourette, commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Protection.All the buildings at the Oyster Creek site are “designed and constructed to withstand fires,” Mr. O’Brien said in a statement.

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      Wildfire Grows in New Jersey and New York, Despite Modest Rainfall

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      The Jennings Creek fire is currently burning across 3,500 acres, officials said, and is expected to grow to over 5,000 acres.A wildfire consuming a vast stretch of hilly forest along the New York-New Jersey border continued to grow on Monday despite the first significant rainfall in nearly six weeks, fire officials said. Bone-dry weather and gusts of up to 40 miles per hour are expected to sweep through the region on Tuesday, raising the risk that the fire will continue to spread.More than 3,500 acres were burning in New Jersey and New York as of Monday night, and the fire was expected to grow to more than 5,000 acres, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said.About 20 percent of the New Jersey portion of the fire was contained, according to the state’s Forest Fire Service. It was not clear how much of the New York portion of the fire was contained.The rain on Sunday night, measuring just a quarter of an inch across the region, only temporarily slowed the fire’s growth, said Christopher Franek, an assistant division fire warden for the Forest Fire Service.“We’re throwing everything we’ve got at it,” he said. “A lot of manual labor is choking on smoke and dust.” Five thousand acres is nearly eight square miles — about a third the size of Manhattan.Hundreds of firefighters from dozens of fire departments in both states are battling the blaze in a rugged patch of Passaic County in New Jersey and Orange County in New York near the Appalachian Trail.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More