Containment

The New Jersey wildfires sparked by a flare dropped from a National Guard F-16 on a training mission at the Warren Grove range earlier this week is now 70% contained. Firefighters expect to have it fully contained by noon today. The heavy rains last night helped firefighters gain a handle on the fire, which has scorched more than 13,000 acres and destroyed 13 homes and damaged 50 others. The Record reports:

Authorities downgraded their count of homes damaged by the flames to 13, from 50 Tuesday night. A closer inspection revealed that many of the houses that were believed to have suffered damage were not structurally harmed.

Five homes in two senior citizen housing developments in Barnegat were destroyed.

Plante said he expected up to 17,000 acres to be scorched before the fire is extinguished.

Residents and politicians will be asking tough questions about how the fire started and whether the National Guard acted improperly in allowing flares to be fired off during training missions knowing that there was a red flag condition because of a lack of rain in the area of the bombing range. There have been scattered calls to close the facility over the past few years after a variety of incidents, including a plane firing rounds into a school in 2004. This years fire is only the latest in a series of fires that have started as a result of aircraft dropping flares during their training missions.

The flares are fired as a standard operating procedure during bombing missions to throw off air defense systems that focus on the infrared signature of planes. When the flares are fired off too low, they don't have a chance to burn out and that can cause wildfires such as the one that happened this week.