Yosemite Besieged By Massive Wildfires

At more than 120,000 acres, the Rim Fire continues burning all through the Central Sierra Nevada range, and has burned areas within one of the nation's crown jewel national parks - Yosemite.

While Yosemite Valley is safe for now, the same can't be said of the Hetch Hetchy area.

Hetch Hetchy Reservoir taken 4/2013

The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is San Francisco's primary water supply and is a major supplier of power to the Bay area. While the water supply is still functioning, the power systems have been damaged by the wildfires that have encroached on the area.

15,000+ acres have already burned inside the national park, and while wildfires are part of the natural landscape and even the sequoias need fires on occasion to help new growth, the lack of rain and snowpack over the past few years has left the area a tinderbox for extreme fire.

California Governor Jerry Brown on Friday declared a state of emergency for San Francisco, saying the fire had damaged the electrical infrastructure serving the city and forced the Public Utilities Commission to shut down power lines.

On Sunday, the fire moved to within 2 miles of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which serves 85 percent of San Francisco with water, according to San Francisco Public Utilities Commission spokesman Tyrone Jue.

Flames were also raging near two famed groves of towering sequoias that are among the largest and oldest living things on the planet. The trees can withstand fire, but brutal conditions — including harsh winds churning as much as 40 mph and thick brush — have prompted park employees to take extra precautions in the Tuolumne and Merced groves, according to The Associated Press.

“All of the plants and trees in Yosemite are important, but the giant sequoias are incredibly important both for what they are and as symbols of the National Park System,” park spokesman Scott Gediman told the AP.

NBC Bay Area reported that the Berkeley Tuolumne Family Camp had been destroyed by flames. It said staff and campers were evacuated beforehand and no injuries were reported. The camp dates to 1922.

The Rim Fire is that kind of extreme fire. It's burning hot enough to create its own weather, and it's burning the crown of the forest, meaning that it's exceptionally difficult for firefighters to contain. The difficult terrain is also extremely challenging, and the firefighters are trying to protect structures and buildings in the fire zone, but they've been fighting a losing battle so far.

The fire is barely contained, and it may take a change in the weather pattern for firefighters to get the upper hand.

UPDATE:

This is a map of the affected area:


View Larger Map

1,000 Acre Fire Hits Sequoia National Monument

The headline is somewhat misleading.

Fire Threatens Grove of Giant Sequoia
The blaze in the Sequoia National Forest covered more than 1,000 acres by Monday morning.

Yes, there's a fire, but fire is integral to propagating sequois and clearing out deadwood and underbrush. It's not exactly a bad thing. This particular fire is away from the roads and is in the backcountry of the park. It's a part of the park we never had the chance to see when we were there last year.

Protecting human-made structures is important, but fire has to be part of the environment, particularly in the national parks to maintain the ecology. In fact, the National Park Service has essentially indicated that fire suppression within the confines of various national parks, including Sequoia and Kings Canyon has made protecting the very trees that give the park its name all the more difficult.

Fire suppression had eliminated one of the key factors in propagating the trees - it requires fire to set the pine cones and release the nutrients stored within the forest floor all while eliminating lower-tier trees that block the sequoias from getting enough sun.

All throughout Sequoia and neighboring Kings Canyon National Park, one sees the results of fire - the sequoias themselves are quite resistant to fire - trees that are scarred and even cored by fire are still standing and growing around the damage.

Thousands Flee as Wildfires Threaten Athens, Greece

Wildfires continue creeping towards the capital of Greece; Athens.

Frightened inhabitants of Agios Stefanos gathered in the town's main square in early afternoon as flames closed in on the town center and police with loudspeakers directed everyone to leave immediately on the main highway to Athens, 14 miles (23 kilometers) to the southwest.

Other residents tried desperately to save their homes with hoses, buckets and branches. Planes swooped low over the town to pour water on the flaming houses.

"I call on all residents to follow the instructions of the police as to where they will go," an emotional Agios Stefanos deputy mayor Panayiotis Bitakos told Skai TV. "We had been begging the authorities since early in the morning to send forces ... It is too late now. Too late."

The fires are burning so hot that they're creating their own microclimate, including fire tornadoes which sends embers flying in all directions, making firefighting efforts all the more difficult.

Wildfires two years ago turned to cinder hundreds of thousands of acres around Greece. Many of those fires were the result of arsonists. It doesn't appear that this year's wildfires are the result of arsonist, but instead dry conditions.

Currently, more than 100 fires are active around Greece, which is struggling to fight them with limited firefighting capabilities; they're getting assistance from Italy, Cyprus, and France.

Boy Admits Starting Wildfire; Global Warming Not To Blame

A California boy admitted to playing with matches and starting what became one of the worst of the wildfires in the past week.

Officials blamed a wildfire that consumed more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes last week on a boy playing with matches, and said they would ask a prosecutor to consider the case.

The boy, whose name and age were not released, admitted to sparking the fire on Oct. 21, Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Diane Hecht said Tuesday. Ferocious winds helped it quickly spread.

"He admitted to playing with matches and accidentally starting the fire," Hecht said in a statement.

The boy was released to his parents, and the case will be presented to the district attorney's office, Hecht said. It was not clear if he had been arrested or cited by detectives.

Arson is suspected in several other fires.

Sen. Harry Reid could not be reached for comment, despite claiming that global warming was to blame for last week's wildfires.

And unless the boy was an agent for Blackwater, I feel pretty confident that the wildfires had nothing to do with that company, despite what some leftist loons had to say as well.

FEMA's Fakery

What the heck were the FEMA officials thinking when they decided to pull a stunt like this? To hold a press conference and then stock the audience with FEMA officials posing as reporters asking questions?

Whoever thought of this idea, whoever went along with this idea, whoever approved of this idea, and whoever participated in this idea should be canned.

No exceptions.

The credibility of the Administration hinges on being above the board with the American public, and that these FEMA officials thought that this idea would float strikes me as showing just how incredibly tone deaf those officials are.

The Administration should not sit back and let this situation fester. By all accounts, the FEMA reaction to the California wildfires has been good, but this event totally undermines what little credibility FEMA has with the American people.

A top to bottom review of FEMA must be undertaken and all the dead wood removed. Period.

No exceptions.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2 official apologized yesterday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters while real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions.

"We are reviewing our press procedures and will make the changes necessary to ensure that all of our communications are straight forward and transparent," Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA's deputy administrator, said in a four-paragraph statement. ....

FEMA announced the news conference at its Southwest Washington headquarters about 15 minutes before it was to begin Tuesday afternoon, making it unlikely that reporters could attend. Instead, FEMA set up a telephone conference line so reporters could listen.

In the briefing, parts of which were televised live by cable news channels, Johnson stood behind a lectern, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

"It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened. Certainly . . . I should have stopped it," said John P. "Pat" Philbin, FEMA's director of external affairs. "I hope readers understand we're working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it."

All that said, it is curious why FEMA couldn't provide more lead time for the presser and why weren't the media available knowing that FEMA would be having pressers throughout the day?

Would the media have asked different questions? Quite possibly, although there's no way to know what would have been asked. It's easy in hindsight for the media types to say that they'd have asked different or more pointed questions, but there's simply no way to know whether FEMA's response to those questions would have been any different than what was said.

The truth matters.

A bogus presser undermines the fact that the government's response to the wildfires was better than during Katrina - at all levels of government. That's why things ran much more efficiently. The evacuations were handled better by state and local officials, and the federal government came in as they said that they would within hours of the wildfires threatening thousands of homes to provide assistance.

McQ wonders why everyone is being so hard on FEMA when the media fakes the news just as badly. Interesting point, but there's a question of accountability here. We need both to be more accountable and trustworthy. Just because the media screws up early and often doesn't mean we should accept incompetence on the part of the government.

Hat Tip: Captain Ed.

Michelle Malkin has a photoshop contest going for FEMA's logo and new acronyms for the agency.

Now, keep FEMA's (mis)operation in mind next time you hear someone say that the health care system should be entrusted to the government, or that the government should handle sectors of the economy instead of private sector. That includes education.

Government, especially bureaucracies, have no incentives in and of itself to improve its operation. Elections may change the names at the top, but the bureaucrats live on, and they are resistant to change.

Off the Rails

Brian at Radio Equalizer makes an excellent point. Why does the media focus on the likes of Glen Beck, who made inappropriate comments about the victims of the California wildfires, but takes a pass on the nuttiness of what Randi Rhodes had to say?

Rhodes was trying to blame the wildfires on the Blackwater Security Firm, which is currently in hot water over incidents in Iraq where Iraqi civilians were killed.

You just know wherever there is fire, this administration will be out there doing what it does best and that is fanning the flames, you know. It just spooks me, I can’t explain to you how creepy this whole thing is that you know, you’ve got these fires. Some of them are thought to be the work of arsonists and in the same breath you’ve got a community that’s on fire that just recently protested Blackwater West. Just recently said no to Blackwater and apparently you don’t do that.

I mean, I don’t even know what to think. You know, nobody is saying Blackwater set the fires, that is nobody that doesn’t want their house burned down. Nobody is saying that, but it is all so bizarre that this is America and you have to sort of sit there and wonder … arson, same place Blackwater West wants to be, people protesting. And then you find out that some of the guys that used to work for Blackwater are now in Schwarzenegger’s administration.

Did she injure herself that badly that she's gone completely off the rails and engaging in conspiracy theories over the wildfires?

Elsewhere, Mike Malloy directly blamed the "Bush Crime Family" for the wildfires, and all you got is crickets.

The selective outrage by the media is telling. Their bias is showing something fierce.

A Closer Look at California Wildfires

The California wildfires continue burning and threaten thousands of homes, a million people have been displaced, and the New York Times has an entire report on how this has affected Hollywood. Yes, that's the first thing that pops into my mind when you've got hundreds of thousands of acres burnt to a crisp up and down Southern California, multiple casualties, and many thousands of people who have lost homes. I want to know that the Hollywood elites Malibu mansions are okay.

Priorities. How about the tens of thousands of California residents whose life's work is tied up in homes and may not have the capability to rebuild because insurance might not cover the costs to rebuild?

The Times suggests that the wildfires might cost insurers over $1 billion. It will cost residents far more than that in lost memories and priceless possessions lost to the fires.

How about this? How about a report on the fact that illegal aliens were arrested for stealing food and water from an evacuation center in San Diego. Those centers provided food and water donated from around the region, and yet these illegal aliens sought to steal it? How low can they go?

We now know that at least one of the fires was intentionally set - arson. If there were injuries as a result of the arson, that person might be charged with attempted murder and other crimes as well, not to mention the property losses.

A map of where the fires have occurred and what the current situation is can be found here.

More victims have been discovered, including two people whose remains were found in a house that burned in the Witch Creek fire.

Meanwhile, there are Democrats who continue pushing a meme that makes no sense, and is not even based in fact- namely that the wildfires would not have occurred or have been as bad had the National Guard not been deployed to Iraq. The Left can't stop blaming President Bush for the wildfires.

That kind of statement is patently and demonstrably false. The California National Guard has 17,000 troops on standby to deal with any situation in California, and if these Democrats (like presidential candidate Bill Richardson) were honest, they'd note that California Democrat legislators have allowed the California National Guard shrink by 5,000 billets because they've refused to provide tuition incentives to entice people to join up - as many other states have done.

And even if the National Guard had all these personnel on hand, what exactly would they have done in the face of wildfires that whipped up 100 mph winds and a firestorm that incincerated everything in its path. Those winds grounded aircraft and it took a shift in the wind to enable firefighters to gain ground on the fires. Simply throwing men and material at the fires wont beat them back.

However, making those kinds of statements is far too easy to do, and talking points neatly sum up the position of those Democrats. Lots of talk and grousing, but little action.

The environuts also go on a Bush-bashing rant, as though he's responsible for the annual wildfire season. Wildfires happen every year (and Native Americans have known this for centuries), and yet it's somehow Bush's fault? Get a clue.

Of course, such rants are sure to be cash cows for these groups, who get coverage and donations flying in. Nice. Classy.

Even as the fires raged, the National Guard was sending much needed relief.

Then, there's the meme that global warming was behind the wildfires. That too is the nonsensical ravings of lunatic minds. CNN continues to report on the wildfires, but it hoped to tie them in with its report on global warming (just not too closely).

My thoughts and prayers continues to go out to those affected by the fires.

UPDATE:
This is classic - Arnold beating down a clueless ABC News correspondent who tries to make hay of some people grousing about the lack of firefighting aircraft with a cluebat.

I'd also comment that I dont think that people are happy with the situation of being chased from their homes by fires - only that they're happy with the gov't response. It's been competent, which is what we hope it should be in times like this.

UPDATE:
Blogger's Blog has a huge number of links and resources about the wildfires.

Meanwhile, there's a report from San Diego that notes how well a bunch of new developments fared. They managed to avoid the fate of thousands of other homes in the region because they were designed with fire defense in mind. The idea is to require fire sprinklers within the homes and fire retartant materials on the exterior, plus landscaping requirements that provide little opportunity for fires to set alight.

The fire protection concept is still being met with some skepticism, but this baptism by fire might spur other communities to adopt this not only for new homes, but as part of a retrofit on existing homes.

Firestorms Across Southern California Continue

A map of the current extent of the fires says it all. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been burned, thousands of homes destroyed, and up to five people have been killed in fire-related incidents have been reported across Southern California as the wildfires continue to gobble up acre after acre as firefighters struggle to get a handhold on the situation.

The Santa Ana winds, which feed the fires and make them grow uncontrollable, have abated for the moment, enabling firefighters to catch their breath, but the situation remains dire.

More than a million people have been displaced thus far.

Again, the NYT displays some of its irrational Bush bashing, claiming that Bush acted swiftly based on his experience with Hurricane Katrina. That would, of course, ignore the fact that the federal government did move to provide aid to the Gulf Coast states before landfall, but Louisiana officials did so poorly in that crisis that everyone got screwed. California officials are handling the situation far better, and the newly implemented emergency contact system is working to alert residents to evacuate as a result of the oncoming fire hazards.

Firefighters are working to the breaking point, and some are complaining that they simply don't have enough men or equipment. They're also realizing that if they let some homes burn, they might be able to save hundreds more. It's a damning choice.

In response to Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather's comments about the lack of air support to fight the fires, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger noted that it wouldn't have made a difference how many aircraft were deployed because they wouldn't have been able to fly because of the wind situation, which topped 100 mph at times.

With the winds dying down, firefighters should be able to gain control over them in the next few days.


A list of emergency contacts is here.

My thoughts and prayers continues to go out to all those affected by the fires.

Some are speculating that these wildfires may have been part of an al Qaeda plot to start wildfires. I recall that possibility, but the fires could have been started by a firebug just as easily as an al Qaeda operative.

I'd also expect al Qaeda to claim the fires as their own before long. It would fit their MO - a spectacular incident with the potential for mass casualties.

The problem is that wildfires are an annual occurance in the US, and some years are worse than others because of lack of rain, high heat, wind and/or low humidity. It would be too easy to dismiss such an "attack" as nothing more than a naturally occurring disaster rather than a terrorist attack.

A concern, however, would be that while emergency response is focused on firefighting, terrorists could take advantage and cause a mass casualty incident to which assets might not be available as a result of fighting the fires.

UPDATE:
Is arson playing a role in some of the fires? Possibly. One man was arrested by law enforcement after a police helicopter spotted a man on their infrared cameras who may have started one of the many fires. (HT: njdhockeyfan at LGF)

UPDATE:
It looks like law enforcement is ready to declare the Santiago Canyon fire arson, and to issue a $50,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the culprit.

Investigators have identified two separate "points of origin" where they believe the fire was set, CBS News has learned. FBI agents secured the scene to "maintain its integrity."

The Santiago Fire has burned about 19,200 acres east of Irvine, officials said, and it is around 30 percent contained. Six homes and eight outbuildings have been destroyed, with another eight homes and 12 outbuildings damaged. Four firefighters have been injured fighting the blaze and about 3,000 people evacuated.

California Burning

All across Southern California, firefighters are battling fatigue and immense wildfires that are devouring everything in their path. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes, and more than 1,000 homes have gone up in smoke. Thousands more are being asked to leave their homes, which are threatened by fires.

One of the more surreal and tragic moments came when a local reporter was describing one such fire - his own home going up in flames.

The California National Guard has been activated to fight the fires, and the federal government has declared a state of emergency and may send assistance as well.

Fire crews from all over the West are heading to California to assist in fighting the fires and spelling those who have been fighting the fires nonstop since they erupted.

The fires are going to get a whole lot worse as the temperatures continue to rise and the winds whip the flames into a frenzied mass that devours everything in its path.

See here for far more.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected.

UPDATE:
This is a great tool for tracking the fires that are ravaging all over Southern California. Hot Air plays compare and contrast between the situation in California and the situation in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. I think that's a bit of an unfair comparison, although the main thrust is the kind of leadership and direction of state and local officials in California and the lack thereof in Louisiana.

UPDATE:
It didn't take long for folks to start linking the wildfires in California (an annual occurrence) with global warming. The most prominent global warming purveyor? Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat, Nevada. Hypocrite. Waffler.

“One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, stressing the need to pass the Democrats’ comprehensive energy package.

Moments later, when asked by a reporter if he really believed global warming caused the fires, he appeared to back away from his comments, saying there are many factors that contributed to the disaster.

Reid opposes the construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in his state, which would enable nuclear power plants to safely store nuclear waste in a safe location and enable new power plants to come on line that would not generate the greenhouse gases that Reid refers to.

Corzine Wants Warren Grove Shut Down

Gov. Jon Corzine has announced that he'd like to see the Warren Point Firing Range shut down. An F-16 flying a training mission at the range dropped a flare that started a massive wildfire that blackened over 15,000 acres and damaged or destroyed more than 50 homes.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine on Tuesday called for closing the National Guard bombing range where a massive Pinelands wildfire is believed to have started last week.

"I will be strongly in favor of its closing," Corzine said.

The fire charred more than 17,000 acres of Pinelands over six days before being declared fully contained Monday. It is believed to have started when a National Guard F-16 fighter on a training run over the Warren Grove Gunnery Range along the Burlington-Ocean county border dropped a flare into dry brush.

"I would like to hear the pros and cons in a rational presentation of the facts, but it's going to be a hard sell to convince me Warren Grove ought to remain open," Corzine said at a news conference at the governor's mansion.

The Air Force has convened an accident investigation board to review the incident. New Jersey's two U.S. senators met Monday in Washington with officials from the National Guard and Air Force, but neither called for closing the range. U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez said they would wait for the investigation to be completed and review any recommendations to make the range safer.

Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Defense Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on Corzine's stance.

It would appear that his mind is really made up. He'd like to see it closed. If Warren Grove is closed, where will the Air National Guard conduct its training missions? How would this affect Air National Guard training and readiness? Does that even enter into his political calculations or is he more concerned with the appearance of doing something?

Unlike Menendez and Lautenberg who have said they'd wait until the investigation is complete and recommendations made, Corzine is already on the next step.

UPDATE:
Former Spook is on the same page as I am when it comes to the readiness, and he's got some interesting information too. If Warren Grove is shuttered as Corzine wants, that means that NJ and PA ANG units would have to fly down to North Carolina to do their training. That's time and money that could be better served by keeping Warren Grove open.

Of course, Corzine doesn't seem to understand that his own troops--the New Jersey Air National Guard--will be among those most affected by the range closure. The beauty of having a training range close-by is just that: it maximizes the time pilots can spend honing combat skills, while minimizing transit time (and the fuel required to get there). New Jersey pilots can probably get required training at other ranges, but it won't be as convenient--or cheaper--than using Warren Grove. We're also wondering if Governor Corzine is prepared to compensate other states in the event that one of his jets crashes--or starts a fire--while using a range in another state. Why should DoD pay for future mishaps, put in motion by Jon Corzine's latest example of political petulance?

Technorati: warren grove

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.

Eye to the Sky

The wildfire in South Jersey continue to grow as a combination of low humidity and high winds have caused the fires to spread to more than 13,000 acres. A front is expected to move through the area this afternoon and tonight bringing rain, thunderstorms, and cooler temperatures, which will aid the firefighters gain a handle on the fires.

The fires started when an F-16 on a training mission dropped a flare which sparked the inferno. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate the area.

Firefighters were keeping an anxious eye on the weather Wednesday as they fought to contain a massive wildfire that has consumed about 13,500 acres, almost 20 square miles, of brush and pine forest in southern New Jersey.

Dry conditions and strong winds helped fan the blaze, which began Tuesday afternoon on a military aerial bombing range about 25 miles north of Atlantic City.

The fire was not likely to double, state Forest Fire Service chief Maris Gabliks said.

No deaths or injuries have been attributed to the fire, but it has forced the evacuation of about 2,500 homes in the area along the border between Ocean and Burlington counties.

There have been some homes that were damaged or destroyed by the fire. The Star Ledger blog also has comments by folks angry at the National Guard for causing this. Photos and video from the scene can be found here.

UPDATE:
The smoke from the fires has caused the state police to shut down a stretch of the Garden State Parkway. If you were planning to head to Atlantic City from New York City, today isn't a good day to try your luck.

The Garden State Parkway is closed between exits 58 and 63 as fire continues to rage through the Pine Barrens.

The highway and nearby routes 72 and 539 have been closed because of heavy smoke, officials said at a noon press briefing.

The fire has burned 13,500 acres and remains only about 30 percent contained, state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson said.

"We are not out of the woods," Jackson said. "We do not have the upper hand. We have done what we need to do, and we need to hope for some luck and keep working hard."

The fire has damaged 1,300 homes, New Jersey State Police Lt. Commander Drew Lieb said. Five of those homes have been destroyed.

1,300 homes damaged with five destroyed? Wow. Thousands of folks are still unable to return home because the fires aren't contained, though the expected rainstorms this afternoon and tonight will help firefighters get a handle on the situation. That is, unless the storms cause more wildfires due to lightning strikes in a region that is red flagged because of the dry conditions.

UPDATE:
Firefighters are hoping that the rain will help get a handle on the fire, though as the storm front came through, the high winds helped fan the flames - some reached 150 feet into the air.

A cheer went up outside the emergency command post in Ocean County shortly before 7 this evening when rain began to fall on the massive forest fire that has consumed 21 square miles of South Jersey pinelands.

Fire officials hope the rain, which fell heavy for brief periods this evening, will help quell the blaze that has caused thousands of people to flee their homes.

But it is unclear if the rain will be enough to stop the fire that has already burned through 13,500 acres of dry pine forests and destroyed several homes.

"Our main goal is to keep it west of the Parkway. That's what our whole strategy is," Maris Gabliks, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said at a briefing late this afternoon.

The earlier report of 1,300 homes destroyed was off by more than a little bit. Only 13 homes have been damaged and 5 were destroyed.

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.