New Jersey Wildfires Torch Thousands of Acres

More than 12,000 acres of land have gone up in flames and firefighters are struggling in difficult conditions. At least 2,500 homes have been evacuated. The fire was apparently started after a flare dropped from a New Jersey Air National Guard F-16 and landed in the tinder dry pine and brush. The pilot was training on the firing range at Little Egg Harbor:

A wildfire along the border of Ocean and Burlington counties in southern New Jersey burned thousands of acres of brush and pine forest Tuesday, closing several highways in the area and damaging several nearby homes.

By 6:30 p.m., the fire had consumed about 5,000 acres, according to Bert Plante, a division fire warden for the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

``It's going to be larger. It has great potential to be much larger,'' Plante said.

Firefighters were hoping to contain the blaze between 5,000 and
10,000 acres, Plante said.

Routes 539 and 72 were closed by the fire, which started about
2:15 p.m. on the Warren Grove Gunnery Range, a 9,400-acre expanse of gentle hills, sandpits and scrub pines used for aerial bombing practice by Air National Guard pilots.

Lt. Col. James Garcia, a spokesman for the New Jersey Air National Guard, said it was believed a flare dropped from one its F-16s may have started the blaze.

Dry conditions and winds gusting to 30 mph contributed to the rapid spread of the blaze.

At least six homes in a mobile home park in Barnegat Township were damaged, with firefighters trying to protect the remaining homes, Plante said. Neighborhoods in both Barnegat and Stafford townships were being evacuated, according to the Ocean County emergency management office.

Meanwhile, Plante said fire trucks were being moved into front yards of homes in the village of Warren Grove, where homes also were threatened.

Several mobile homes have been damaged by the fire thus far, and firefighters are hoping to contain the fire, though the conditions are conspiring against them.

The investigation in to how the fire started will focus on the flare dropped, and whether the pilot released the flare too low to the ground, among other factors. If it was dropped too low, the flare would not burn out by the time it hits the ground, allowing the flare to start a fire in any combustible materials with which it came into contact.

This isn't the first time that an Air National Guard plane was at the heart of a controversy. In 2004, a National Guard plane based at Andrews AFB on a night mission over a firing range in Little Egg Harbor instead strafed a school.

The Air National Guard warplane, flying a night training mission out of Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, fired a burst of 27 rounds from its 20-millimeter cannon shortly before 10:15 p.m. as it streaked over Little Egg Harbor Township, 20 miles north of Atlantic City, New Jersey military officials said last night.

Col. Brian Webster, commander of the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard, said that the pilot, who was not identified, fired the cannon inadvertently just as he turned into a dive to strafe a target at the Warren Grove firing range in Ocean County, a sprawling military reservation in the Pine Barrens that has been used for bombing and strafing practice since World War II.

The pilot was to have fired the half-second burst of shells well into the dive, at about 5,000 feet, the colonel said, but instead the cannon went off at an altitude of 7,000 feet, and at least eight of the bullets - non-explosive lead slugs more than 2 inches long - crashed through the roof of Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School, three miles south of the target range. No one was hurt, and the damage was minor.

UPDATE:
Corrected year of the strafing incident at the Little Egg Harbor school.