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West Milford fire among several wildfires burning in northern New Jersey
POMPTON LAKES, N.J. — Crews continued to battle several wildfires in northern New Jersey on Saturday.
Fires have been breaking out across the state this week as the drought affecting the Tri-State Area stretches on.
“New Jersey Forest Fire Service in general has responded to over 400 fires last month and roughly 40-some fires between yesterday and today,” New Jersey Forest Fire Service Chief Bill Donnelly said Saturday.
The chief said it’s likely fires will continue popping up until the region gets some rain.
“It’s up to Mother Nature. When she brings the rain, we’ll take a break, but until we see that, I don’t see any break in sight,” he said.
An air quality alert has been issued for northern New Jersey, along with New York City and the Hudson Valley, through 12 a.m. Monday due to the smoke.
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1 dead in fire spreading across New Jersey and New York
The most recently reported blaze is the Jennings Creek wildfire near Greenwood Lake Turnpike and East Shore Road in West Milford. The New Jersey Forest Fire Service first reported it around 2:15 p.m. Saturday.
“That’s a fire that started yesterday. Our fire tower noticed it, and it was spotted in New York. Well, yesterday afternoon, the fire was pushing into New York. Winds changed overnight and started pushing it back into New Jersey,” Donnelly said.
The fire service said it has spread across 2,000 acres, including part of New York’s Orange County, and is not contained at all. Donnelly says it’s the biggest wildfire in the state so far this year.
A total of 10 structures are being threatened by the fire, including two homes, but there have not been any evacuations at this time, the fire service said.
East Shore Road and Beach Road are both closed, along with all trails in Long Pond Ironworks State Park and Tranquility Ridge.
According to Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus, somebody responding to the fire was killed Saturday afternoon. Further details have not yet been released.
Pompton Lakes fire
The Cannonball 3 wildfire near Cannonball Road in Pompton Lakes was first reported early Saturday morning.
The New Jersey Forest Fire Service reported just before 3:30 p.m. that the fire had spread across 164 acres and was 50% contained. The service says the flames are threatening 55 structures, but none have been evacuated at this time.
“Everything seems to realistically be in good shape,” Donnelly said of the Pompton Lakes fire.
Englewood Cliffs fire
A wildfire burning along the Palisades Interstate Parkway in Englewood Cliffs, which started overnight Thursday into Friday, is now 75% contained after spreading over 39 acres, the fire service said Saturday evening.
No structures are threatened at this time, and the fire service said there will not be any additional updates on this fire unless there is a significant development.
Fire officials have not determined the cause of any of these three fires at this time.
New Jersey wildfires
The ongoing dry, windy conditions have helped fuel a number of wildfires across New Jersey in recent days, including a fire in Jackson Township that started Wednesday.
Fire officials say that wildfire ultimately spread over 350 acres, but crews were able to achieve 90% containment by Friday evening.
The Ocean County prosecutor’s office announced Saturday that the cause of the fire was determined to be magnesium shards from a shotgun round igniting combustibles on the berm of a shooting range. A Brick Township man has been arrested and charged with arson and violation of the regulatory provisions relating to firearms in connection to the Jackson Township wildfire.
contributed to this report.
Sheeba Atiqi’s is on a goodwill tour, and while it may look easy, it’s anything but. As a civilian ambassador for the Tulsa Police Department, her goal is to thaw relations with an often standoffish community.
“People are afraid to approach them, afraid to ask them questions,” Atiqi said. “My job as a police ambassador is basically to be the liaison between the department and the community members.”
It can be challenging, Atiqi says, because people may be “afraid due to their own background to engage with officers.”
Tulsa is proud of its history as the center of the oil industry, but the city also grapples with ghosts — especially the aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, when local police assisted a rampaging white mob, leading to dozens, if not more, being killed and a Black neighborhood of nearly forty square blocks being incinerated. So the distrust that Tulsa police face runs deep and spans generations.
“If you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it,” said Chief Dennis Larson, a 45-year veteran of the department. “I think we’re doing a really good job of learning.”
Larson says building trust is important for every police department in the United States, and agrees that it only “takes one bad moment” to ruin that trust.
In Tulsa, one such moment came in 2016 with the police shooting of motorist Terrence Crutcher. He was troubled and had PCP in his system, but was unarmed. The white police officer who shot and killed him was later acquitted of manslaughter.
“Terrence’s death truly unearthed a century of racial tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” said Tiffany Crutcher, Terrence’s twin sister.
When asked if she holds police accountable, Tiffany said, “What does accountability look like when you kill an unarmed man with his hands in the air?”
Tulsa has more police shootings per arrest than 93% of the nation’s major police departments, CBS News found using data from Mapping Police Violence. The city’s own data shows lower-than-average scores when it comes to accountability — resolution of citizen complaints. Tulsa’s own equality review gave itself failing grades on juvenile and adult arrests by race.
“If we did something wrong, we’re gonna own it. We’re gonna say, ‘How do we fix it and how do we make sure it never happens again?'” Larson said.
Tulsa police did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the police data. Tiffany Crutcher says the data speaks for itself.
“What you’re saying is antithetical to the data. I didn’t make up the data — it’s your data,” Crutcher said.
When asked if the department is making inroads with building trust, Crutcher said, “It means getting uncomfortable, and I don’t believe Tulsa’s police department has done that yet.”
Meanwhile, Larson implores critics who see the changes as performative to “judge us by our actions in the future.”
“We need to get into the mindset to help ourselves,” Atiqi said.
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Trump announces Musk, Ramaswamy will lead newly-created Department of Government Efficiency
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that billionaire Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy will head up a new agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump in a statement said the two “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement.”
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In his own statement, Musk said the new agency “will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”
Musk was a major part of Trump’s reelection campaign effort, while Ramaswamy ran against Trump in the Republican primary before endorsing him.
The department’s acronym, DOGE, is also a dog meme that inspired Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that was created as a joke and is credited with being the first meme coin.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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