As a huge wildfire continues to burn in central New Jersey on April 24, smoke from the blaze is expected to reach residents in New York City some 60 miles away, prompting an air quality alert.
The air quality will be unhealthy for sensitive groups and residents will start to smell and see smoke, New York City Emergency Management predicted. The alert covered Manhattan along with the Bronx, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland.
The Jones Road wildfire, which started the morning of April 22 in southern Ocean County, New Jersey, burned 13,250 and was 50% contained as of the evening of April 23. Officials said that while firefighters had made progress on containing the blaze, it was expected to keep burning until the area sees a soaking rain, likely not until the end of the week.
Heavy smoke from the fire was affecting visibility in the neighboring townships, where residents have been allowed to return to their homes after about 5,000 people were evacuated.
Fire could be one of New Jersey’s biggest
The blaze was threatening to become the biggest in New Jersey in 20 years, officials said. Shawn LaTourette, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the damage is expected to spread, but in uninhabited forest areas. Embers from the fire sparked several small blazes near a decommissioned Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Waretown, according to state officials.
“New Jersey has some of the most volatile wildland fire fuels in the entire country,” New Jersey Forest Fire Service Chief Bill Donnelly said at a news conference. “Everybody’s used to seeing California and things like that, that chaparral that burns up the hills and goes crazy. These Pine Barrens out here are the exact same type of fuel model. They’re just like having napalm spread across the ground.”
The fire’s cause is still under investigation.
Business destroyed in wildfire: ‘Gut-wrenching’
There were no reported injuries in the fire, but multiple officials said a building in Lacey Township’s industrial park was destroyed, along with multiple outbuildings and vehicles. Twelve structures remained under threat.
Bob Nosti, owner of Liberty Door and Awning, arrived the morning of April 23 to find his business burned to the ground. He wasn’t worried about it a day earlier, because the flames were two towns away, Nosti told the Asbury Park Press, part of the USA TODAY Network. But the blaze moved quickly.
“Then all of a sudden, my building was gone an hour later,” he said. “It’s gut-wrenching for sure, but we’ll be all right. We’ll rebuild – and we’ll build it bigger and better.”
More Americans are breathing polluted air
The air quality alerts on April 24 come as smoke and smog from wildfires have caused tens of millions of Americans to breathe toxic air, even though man-made pollutants have decreased, a study by the American Lung Association found.
The study found that 25 million more people in the U.S. than last year’s report are breathing air that scores a failing grade in terms of pollutants that can cause premature death, impair cognitive abilities and trigger asthma attacks. It’s also more than any other report in a decade.
Read more: Tens of millions more Americans are breathing polluted air. What places have it the worst?
Nearly half of the country lives in areas that received a failing grade for either particle pollution – fine particulate matter created when things burn – or ozone pollution, according to the report. Almost 43 million live in places that failed both pollution measures. Many of the hotspots for such pollution are along the West Coast.
Contributing: Thao Nguyen and Michael Loria, USA TODAY; Erik Larsen, Ken Serrano, Brian Johnston and Amanda Oglesby, the Asbury Park Press
