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Lisa LaRocca

Ben Nandy

WC1111firepress conrfernce_2024-11-11-13-21-13

We are following breaking news for you out of Orange County this afternoon. The county executive is holding a briefing right now about that Jennings Creek wildfire in Greenwood Lake. Let's get to that scene right now and take a listen to what's happening. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and I am serving as one of the unified commanders on the Jennings Creek fire. Uh The Jennings Creek fire is on the Starling for State Park. Uh We did an aerial recon mission this morning and our current estimate is 2500 acres in New York State and 2500 acres in New Jersey. We currently have 20% containment on the fire. 10 of that is in New York and 10 of that is in New Jersey assets currently assigned to this fire. We have 33 5 person hand crews, five engines, fo uh four water tankers, six helicopters and we have about 230 personnel in the field. Uh With that, I will go to uh p good afternoon, everybody. My name is Peter Cirigliano commissioner for Orange County Emergency Services. I just want to touch on a couple of things. First and foremost, I want to thank all of the first responders that have came uh to, to the event here in Greenwood Lake and town of Warwick to help control this fire to the best of our abilities. The outpouring support that we have received from our neighboring counties and all of the fire departments within Orange County has been tremendous just to touch on uh the operations from last night, we did have a voluntary evacuation that took place on Cliff Road which is off of Ehore Road. 12 homeowners uh evacuated their residents. Um And luckily we were able to contain the fire, no structural damage to any of those homes. On Cliff Road. The American Red Cross has established a temporary location on uh Waterstone 51 Waterstone Road in the village of Greenwood Lake. It's the community center, we have 6000 gallons of potable water and along with N95 masks that are available to the public if, if needed. Um The last thing I would like to touch on is the remaining power outages that we have, uh is 12, which is only on Cliff Road. We hope to have those restored uh at some point today, but we're, we're gonna be following up with Orange and Rockland on power restoration. Other than that, I would like to turn it over to the county executive Steve Newhouse for his comments. Thank you, Pete. Um I just want to thank everybody. We, um, we were here on Saturday night in, in particular, Commissioner Cirigliano and uh, Deputy Commissioner Tan Cali, we unfortunately had, uh, a fatality with Mr Vasquez. It was a very tough situation. The New York State police, the town of Warwick police and the sheriff's office did a phenomenal job at the scene as well as grief counselors. It was a very emotional um, situation yesterday. Obviously, we had a very difficult day with the fire making a major advance. And uh we had a very fluid situation with uh the volunteer fire departments backing up the State Forest firefighters. We really were able to save every house there. We had no problems from any of the residents that were asked to evacuate. They knew what was coming. You could see it, you guys have seen the videos. It was a very dangerous situation. The Deputy Commissioner for Homeland Security came in last night, Commissioner Striano and I personally brought him up to the scene so he could see what was going on so he could ask Albany to bring in more resources. The mayor of Green Lake and the town supervisor will be coming up after me. We've been working seamlessly to make sure that the community is protected. The outcome. The the outpouring of support from the, from the residents and businesses have been phenomenal. Uh We have a lot of men and women that are working hard, uh and that food and drinks and the different supplies that they bought has made a difference to them. So, uh we are going to get through this right now. We are happy that the wind direction has changed so we can uh take a breath and get back to work, which we've been doing. You see the air operations uh functioning right now. One other thing we were gonna do, we wanted to announce is that there will be a two hour delay tomorrow in the Greenwood Lake uh school district for the middle school. And, uh, we have the superintendent here, uh, to take questions after that, but I'd like to turn it over to my friend, the town supervisor, Jesse Dwyer. Thank you, Mr County executive and thank you for all your support that you've brought here from the Orange County Department of Emergency Management. Let's make no mistake. This is one of the worst natural disasters the town of Warwick has seen in many, many years. And if things turn south, the threat to life and the threat to property could really take a turn for the worse. And we're so grateful for the park Rangers, the DC, the support that we've gotten from the state police, but more importantly from the local responders here in the town of Warwick, as well as all throughout the state of New York. This morning, we had a briefing with, I would estimate over 300 local volunteer agencies and servicemen and women who have come here to the town of Warwick to help us protect our park, protect our homes and protect the lives of the residents in the town of Warwick. And we're forever grateful for their commitment to community service and what they've brought here to the town of Warwick. The Warwick Police Department has been leading the effort to keep traffic control and to make sure that all of our residents are informed and stay safe and can get in and out of their homes safely. And we appreciate their hard work as well as the partners from the Orange County Sheriff's office and the State Police, as well as the Green Lake Police Department. Everybody's been working and collaborating almost seamlessly under these extremely difficult circumstances that we've been dealing with here recently, roads are open within the area. They're only open to local traffic. If you need to get in or out of your home, you can do. So we ask that nobody travels this road to work in the morning, choose an alternate path. Uh We, we are keeping the road slightly open, but we ask you to drive very carefully in the area as firefighters are actively managing the scene and they are out in the roadways often. So if you're going to travel the road, please be careful when you do that. Um And with that, I'd like to introduce Greenwood Lake, Mayor Tom Halley, who's been a great partner in the efforts to handle this situation. Tom, thank you, supervisor Dwyer. Uh, first of all, in my, uh, over 50 years of living here, this has been the most significant and probably most potentially dangerous situation I've seen or been involved in. Uh, the village of Greenwood Lake is a small village by standards. Um, I am certainly overwhelmed, truly overwhelmed by the amount of help that came our way. When I, when I got here this morning, I saw fire trucks from Oneonta. Uh, some of them might be close to Syracuse that traveled throughout the night because the severity of this storm of this, uh, fire, um, could change at a moment's notice. I'm so, so happy and content. Um, Executive County Executive New House with the services and the professional team of coordinators that he sends to Greenwood Lake. Whenever we have a situation like this, I can't thank him enough. Um The people of Greenwood Lake are overwhelmed. Our restaurants are the people who provide us with provisions. Like we said a few seconds ago, it keeps the, it keeps the fire firefighters moving, keeps them fed and thirsty. I can't thank you enough. Um, and God bless everyone and God bless America. Thank you at this point in time. We'll take any questions. We'll start on this side and we'll kind of work our way around anybody over here. Question of the acreage is 5000 acres. That was, we did a recon initially, the fire was too dangerous to get close to it. Get an acreage, we actually flew it this morning. So that, that, that is the number that a good approximation of what we have right now. The only way to truly get a good acreage is to have somebody walk that fire line and right now that's too dangerous and we don't want to put people at risk to do that. So what happened yesterday? What ha what happened over the weekend? We had a major push from the South wind, right? So that pushes the fire into New York, right? That's happened for a couple of days. Now, starting today, we're starting to get that West wind, which is good. It's gonna push it away from the Greenwood Lake community tomorrow and then Wednesday and then Thursday, it's going north north north. So the fire is gonna be pushing away from this community. That's a good thing. Ok. So we currently have the East shore communities protected right now. And then in a Tuxedo side, we have the Blue Lake communities protected. We got good black up to those communities. And now we just gotta come across the north here and find a good place and it's very steep and hazard terrain to put a line that we can hold. That's our plan moving forward and the we and the weather is with us. Now, tomorrow, tomorrow is gonna be very windy forecast right now is, is 20 mile an hour gusts, uh 20 miles steady with gusts of 30 Right. Right. Now, that's just at the limit of when our helicopters can fly. Our hope is that it doesn't get any worse than that. So we can still use our air asses tomorrow. Uh Next question over here, yes. You say that the fire is 20% contained. But how many people are in harm's way? So East Shore Community, we estimated about 100 and 70 structures that we were able to save last night. Over in Blue Lake, we're talking about maybe 40 structures which includes private residents as well as, as businesses. But so much of this is also in protected forests where there aren't a lot of people. Can you give us some perspective as to how many people this could impact? I don't know the population areas just to the north here. I can't comment on that. The region did see some rain overnight, did do anything. Yeah. So let's talk about the weather. We, we were in a pretty, this is pretty rare that we have a drought going this far into the fall. Uh probably haven't seen a drought in this in like the mayor said, he hadn't seen anything like this in 50 years. Like we'll put this in perspective last, last season. From October 1st to the current day New York State Forest rangers respond to nine fires for 18 acres. Right. This year, we responded to 61 fires for almost 3400 acres, you know, six fold number of fires and the best increase, geometrical increase in the number acreage. And mostly because of this large fire, uh we haven't had a really good rain like so last night we got a quarter inch of rain. That's, that's kind of what we call appreciable rain. So it just gave us a little breather for our resources to get some, some uh some rest. These local resources have been running the gun since Saturday when this, when this thing really blew up today gives a little time to take a little breather. But tomorrow the winds come back. Uh Yeah, it's been from where I'm at in Suffolk County. We, we received maybe a half inch of rain in the last 10 weeks where we should have had about 12 inches. That's how dry is. So what does that do to our firefighting efforts? Basically the first five inches of that, that, that duff, you know, that be beneath the surface leaf litter that, that falls off the trees, that stuff is bone dry, right? So right now you get a little bit of rain, puts that surface fire out, but if it's in the dump, it's gonna stay there. It's gonna smell like a cigar until it gets dry enough and then that fire can pop up again and that's probably what we're gonna see uh late this afternoon and, and, and, and tomorrow, when it starts going again, can you speak to the need for residents to heed the warnings of the restrictions that are in place. I'll, uh, I'll go to OEM on that. But moving in, um, the county executive, uh actually on Friday of last week, renewed the burn ban that we currently have in effect in Orange County and uh to the, to the incident, Commander's Point, Brian's Point. It's, it's crucial that they heed those warnings of the burn ban and, and we've been touting that for the last 10 days or so, how crucial it is to not have the unnecessary bans. Um I can't stress that enough. We don't need any more work right now. We've been, we've been running for the past 30 days. We currently have about 15 fires right now that we are working in, in, in the lower Hudson Valley and the rest of the state. And, you know, we're getting tired, we're getting tired. So don't create any new fires, don't create any new incident for us to deal with. That's the best we can ask for the public with the of the support that you receive from near and far bottom line. Do you have enough manpower? I think we're, we're thin right now. Uh We're protecting the structures that we need to protect and that we'll see what happens in the coming days. We still have more resources coming in. Uh There are some fires that are, that are starting to get into a controlled status and we're gonna start receiving some of the assets from those fires on this fire. This fire is going to get worse and larger. It's gonna get, it will get a little larger. Some of the things we do when we fight these fires is we, we fight fire with fire. We'll pick a trail that we can hold, set some backfire. So some of the fire will grow be because of some of the efforts that we do out in the field and some will grow because of the way the wind is pushing the fire. Can you educate us a little bit because we mourn with you regarding the loss of one of your colleagues, an 18 year old who is barely out of high perish while doing his volunteer work. It does raise the question of what kind of training do young teenagers get before they're thrust to do a job like this, to make sure they know where to go, where not to go, what to do and what not to do. So our basic firefighter training is uh it's a federal wildland course. It's nationally certified. That's, that's 40 hours of training that includes classroom time as well as as time in the field. Yeah. And there is, there is any measure that you are taking that we can avoid before, before dying about this virus. Just we just, we try to do this is a very dangerous profession. This is a very dangerous incident that we have here and we try to do the best thing to mitigate as much of those hazards as we can. You know, we, we don't go into these willy nilly. We try to think about and measure the risks that are there, right? Versus the values at risk, right? Biggest value at risk right now, like last night was those communities, right? Our priority is always life safety. And for us that includes our boots on the ground. We wanna send our firefighters home at the end of the day, right? And then, and then property comes next. So it's always life safety first and property and we do the best we can with the resources we have on hand. And yeah. So what's, what's so challenging here is that we see the hills right here, right, fairly steep. It gets steeper when you go over that ridge and it's also super rocky. Like we've got, we've got three dozers on scene right now and there's very limited place that our doses can get to and actually put some, some really wide control line in. For us, most of our efforts is gonna be hand line people hiking in with hand tools to make the fire lines that we need to, to try and contain this. You just can't put adults area on because then it's again, it's managing that risk, right? Like this like this, we don't want to put our dozer operators at risk, especially when there's when there's a large fire right next to it. Do we have a cause yet? Uh We don't have a cause. We know the origin of where it started. It started. I'll give you it started near the intersection of the Lake to Lake Trail and the West Valley Trail. Uh, because we still have an active fire that's still going, it's unsafe to put out wild land fire investigators in there just to start doing the cause and origin investigation. But when that happens, we will, this fire started in New York and then moved into Jersey. Now it's, now it's over the state border. There's no mandatory evacuations. And is there, you mentioned a little over 100 structures in total that were safe but are any still, uh, not, not currently, not currently. Where is the line that you are going to seek out and try and hold? Ah, it's pretty much we can, we're looking at it right now. You know, we, what we try to do is we, we try to take the path of least resistance if we gotta climb up a hill like this and put line and we're not gonna do that. We're gonna try to go on this side of the hill where it goes down on that side of the hill. So that's what our operations people in the field are assessing today while we get this little, this little breather, this little break is to figure out where our next, uh, control lines will be. Thank you for all you guys are doing anybody else? All right, thanks for your time, folks. Thank you. Uh Brian Gallagher. Uh first name is Brian Bryan, last name is Gallagher Gallagh er State Forest Rangers uh in sync command. Yeah. Uh New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Thank you. All right, you have.

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WC111lisa830_2024-11-11-08-47-45

Overnight showers again, not going to make a big dent when it comes to what we need to stop. What's happening across our region. Crews are working tirelessly this Monday morning to contain that fire in Orange County. I'm Tara Joyce and I'm Lisa. S sadly, a teenager helping fight those flames did die. Let's get right to news 12. She is in Greenwood Lake with an exclusive update from the county executive there, Lisa. Yeah. Well, the good news is they are making some progress. They saved homes last night. Let's get right to Orange County executive Steve Newhouse. Thanks for joining us. It's, I know it's so busy. All the guys lining up getting ready. What can you tell us so? Good morning? Um, obviously we've made it through tonight, which is great. It was a tug of war pretty much all night long between the firefighters and the fire. It was, uh, really touch and go between some of the houses, but they did a phenomenal job. Uh, the rain helped a little bit the wind directions even better. Uh, so we're getting some breathing room but we have a lot of work to go. Uh, we think we got about 2500 acres that it's either on fire or has burnt or simmering, uh or smoldering. So we're going to go up there and attack it. We just gave out uh marching orders. Everybody's broken up into different teams with the state uh forest Rangers uh as our running point. So this is still their scene and we're backing them up, but we feel a lot better right now, but we're not going to get a better picture until we have a couple of air assets. I have two Black Hawk helicopters inbound as well as one state trooper helicopter. So we're gonna be able to get a good idea of what happened overnight and where this is heading the wind direction over the next few days also is is favorable to us. It's pushing it back to where it had burnt already, which is good because now it's going to be a lower fire if it does reignite as opposed to a brand new timber. So uh we feel like we have a little bit of a better hand. I have a lot of manpower from the tri state area all over the place coming in. And uh I think we got the message out and no homes were lost. Uh I know you said it was, it was close, it was touch and go. Oh yeah, we were, we were in people's backyard. I was on people's porches and the fire was, you know, feet away while the firefighters were pushing us back. Uh I brought in the Deputy Commissioner of Homeland Security. I said, you gotta see this for yourself. I'm a front line type of guy and I showed them and they were like, wow, so we have everything the cavalry is coming from Albany, uh to see what, uh, what's going on here so we can give us those resources we need. That's great. You said with the Black Hawk helicopters that they're gonna be taking water out of the lake and dumping it down. Absolutely. So we got 33 helicopters that are, uh, they're gonna be on station doing work as well as our ground people, um pushing things back. We also have heavy equipment, so we have a lot of stuff here. So it's a great cooper between uh all the local assets as well as the county. I have our county fuel trucks are here to refuel all the, uh, you know, do a hot fill on the fire truck. So we are full on, you guys are on it. So, what do people in the area need to know? I mean, there's no evacuations. We just, just everybody's got to be patient. You know, we're trying our best here to get these things of this pushed back. We did shut off power and we're going to try to get that restored. But, you know, if the fire had burned some of these holes or in that area, we can't risk having live wires while our guys are working there. So, just be patient with us. Help each other out. If you have a neighbor that lives here, tell them to come state your for a night or two or at least buy them, you know, get them some lunch. I think things are gonna get progressively better over the next couple of days. Especially now that we have the resources that we need here and the wind, the wind direction. That's huge. Absolutely. A big help for us. So that's something, you know, we had a very good briefing. We haven't had one of those in, in a few days. So, uh, last night was very hairy. So, well, when we were driving here from, you know, from where we were earlier and we're driving along the lake and you can see there are spots that are smoldering. You can see, you know, it's, it's scary to say yesterday there was literally an eclipse over this area of Orange County. You know, it's just nothing but smoke. You could barely see the sun coming through it. So it's a lot better today that rain pushed it down a little bit, that ground is very dry. So this could kindle up very quickly. So that's why these guys are all been sent out here. We have roving uh troops that are gonna actually relieve some of these guys. So, uh, it's square way my people that work for me are the best and they are now being put where they need to be, the state is running the show, but they are letting us do what we do best and as far as what people can do to help as well, just before we wrap quickly, obviously careful, do not throw cigarette butts out. And most of these have been set by, by humans. So, you know, uh, just be careful with it and, and, uh, we've had pop ups while we're fighting these in other areas of the county, uh, that we've had to thankfully put out of control very quickly. But, um, it's, it's something that people just gotta be responsible. Very good. County. Orange County executive Steve Newhouse. Thanks so much for being here. Um, and all, and also that all of these people are just from, all over the place, they're from all over the place. And then I gotta tell you, we have so many people delivering food and water. It is well received. I think they're really overwhelmed with it. Now, they have so many, but, you know, we're taking the food and putting it in a, in a fire truck. So while these guys are out there, they're able to drink. So the one thing I'll say is when you come back to your house that's saved, you might have bottles of Gatorade that are empty in your backyard because these guys just kept moving on your house is saved. They're going to your neighbor's house. Uh, so there might be a little bit of a trash, clean up to do, but it's well worth saving your house. How, what would you say about how many people are out here? Are you gonna have out in the, uh, out in the woods? At least hundreds of them? And we've asked for more. There was a handful of state resources up until the last couple of days. So that's why, you know, between that and the wind, it went from 300 acres on fire on Saturday to 2000. So now about 2500 acres. So that's a lot of forest that's been damaged and destroyed. We were earlier at, at one of the, you know, at a convenience store and one of the people who worked there, she lives on the lake, she showed me, she said you could see that orange, orange glow on Saturday. And yesterday she said this morning though, take a look and she was very relieved, you know, you weren't really seeing anything. Yeah. And it's burnt out too a lot. I mean, last night was a full on raging forest fire. They call it brush fire. This is a forest fire. And, uh, it looked like what you and I see on, in California on a regular basis and I, I know old timers that are working here with me and they've never seen it like this ever. So at the end of the day. Uh, we did lose a, a young gentleman on Saturday, which is a tragedy. This is a tough business. These guys are here are risking themselves right now. A lot of accidents happen. It's dangerous work. Um But we're proud to do it. And you also mentioned you're bringing in some construction equipment as well. I mean, that's part of the deal with this. It's not just putting water on it. You gotta churn earth over and get underneath. Yeah. So we're building fire lines when we can. The terrain is very difficult, very rocky and hilly. So it's tough to get crews in and out. So we have EMTS here that are basically field emts that can go out in the, you know, with U TV S and pick these guys up if they need help. But we're also, we did a lot of back burning yesterday too. So people might have seen it expanding. But that was us. If you burn it out when the fire gets to you, it's already out like you're getting rid of that fuel. So that's kind of what they call a controlled burn to like meat it up. So we did a lot of that yesterday as that was coming down the line because we knew we were gonna get overwhelmed. But if it's, if the fuel is burnt out before it gets there, it can't go any further. But I'm telling you it was within 10 ft of most houses and the, the flames were up high. The flames were up high when major trees that are burnt down. So, uh, it was, this is a state forest and they lost a lot of, uh, timber. So, no pun intended. So we're not quite out of the woods yet, but we're getting, we're making progress. I feel a lot more confident this morning than I did last night. Ok. We have the resource now that I needed last night and that the state needed. So we feel a lot better. So that's good. All right. So hopefully these guys stay safe and it's scary in there. Absolutely. And keep these guys in your prayers and of course, a young gentleman we lost on Saturday. All right. Thanks so much again for taking the time out. So you can see a lot going on here. They had a long day ahead of them. So, of course, we'll continue to keep you updated. Let's go back to the studio.

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Firefighters continue battling the Jennings Creek wildfire, which has burned thousands of acres from New Jersey to Greenwood Lake.

Overnight rain brings some help to Hudson Valley wildfires, but flames rage on

Firefighters continue battling the Jennings Creek wildfire, which has burned thousands of acres from New Jersey to Greenwood Lake.

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