The fire is coming.
It’s not a matter of "if" but "when." This weekend’s rain may delay it, but the water will run quickly through the soil, and the Pine Barrens will dry out again underfoot in just a few days, or even hours if temperatures spike again.
And, eventually, there will be a fire.
It will come when the dry winds from the west push out the more humid ocean air. It will come when a cigarette butt is carelessly tossed out a car along Route 70 or 72. Or when a bunch of kids play with matches on the tinderbox forest floor of pine needles and leaf litter. Or when a lone strike of dry lightning hits the tallest pitch pine and sparks fly.
The fire is coming. One that will consume thousands of acres, maybe tens of thousands. When it comes, it will be major. Maybe even as big as in '63, when 200,000 acres of Pine Barrens burned.
Everyone knows it. The forest firefighters, who are making sure the trucks, planes and choppers are ready. The environmentalists, who look forward to the purifying burn of a unique habitat that not only encourages fire, but demands it.
Ask anybody in the Pinelands and they’ll tell you. They’ve never seen it this dry. Not after a snowless winter, and a nearly rainless spring. Not after a March and April where high temperatures brought hibernating pine snakes out of their dens at least a month early to sun themselves by the asphalt straightaways that traverse Chatsworth and Warren Grove. The forest carpet of pine needles is plush, inches thick and has been dried to kindling. It is ready to go. Again.(By Mark Di Ionno/Star-Ledger Columnist)
http://blog.nj.com/njv_mark_diionno/2012/04/di_ionno_after_a_curiously_dry.html
It’s not a matter of "if" but "when." This weekend’s rain may delay it, but the water will run quickly through the soil, and the Pine Barrens will dry out again underfoot in just a few days, or even hours if temperatures spike again.
And, eventually, there will be a fire.
It will come when the dry winds from the west push out the more humid ocean air. It will come when a cigarette butt is carelessly tossed out a car along Route 70 or 72. Or when a bunch of kids play with matches on the tinderbox forest floor of pine needles and leaf litter. Or when a lone strike of dry lightning hits the tallest pitch pine and sparks fly.
The fire is coming. One that will consume thousands of acres, maybe tens of thousands. When it comes, it will be major. Maybe even as big as in '63, when 200,000 acres of Pine Barrens burned.
Everyone knows it. The forest firefighters, who are making sure the trucks, planes and choppers are ready. The environmentalists, who look forward to the purifying burn of a unique habitat that not only encourages fire, but demands it.
Ask anybody in the Pinelands and they’ll tell you. They’ve never seen it this dry. Not after a snowless winter, and a nearly rainless spring. Not after a March and April where high temperatures brought hibernating pine snakes out of their dens at least a month early to sun themselves by the asphalt straightaways that traverse Chatsworth and Warren Grove. The forest carpet of pine needles is plush, inches thick and has been dried to kindling. It is ready to go. Again.(By Mark Di Ionno/Star-Ledger Columnist)
http://blog.nj.com/njv_mark_diionno/2012/04/di_ionno_after_a_curiously_dry.html
Remember I did not write it
