Brush fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park extinguished, NYC drought watch continues

By Katie Houlis

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    NEW YORK (WCBS/WLNY) — New York City firefighters were looking for hot spots overnight in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where a brush fire consumed approximately two acres.

According to fire officials, a passerby who was walking through the park just before 7 p.m. Friday called 911 to report smoke.

By 8 p.m., the FDNY said the fire had grown to two alarms and spread across approximately two acres. FDNY Brooklyn Borough Commander Joe Duggan said the fire was in an “extremely inaccessible,” hilly area with dense brush.

It took about 120 firefighters to get the fire under control, FDNY officials said. Firefighters would remain on the scene overnight to ensure it doesn’t reignite.

“There are some hotter spots. As the wind picks up, there might be a, you know, a spark or something, but we’re leaving fire companies here for the purposes of mitigating any small fires that might happen. It’s very wet up there now, we’ve got a lot of water up there now, so we don’t think that there’s any threat to future fires tonight up there,” FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker said.

It is unclear how the fire started.

“Daylight will help us figure out the cause and origin of this fire,” Tucker said.

FDNY officials said no civilian structures were threatened by the fire at any point. There were no reported injuries.

Crews were also called to another brush fire near the Major Deegan Expressway in the Highbridge section of the Bronx. Further details have not yet been released about that fire.

New York City under drought watch

New York City is under a drought watch, along with other parts of the state, due to the weeks-long dry stretch across the region. Less than 2 inches of rain has fallen in Central Park since September, and October was the driest month ever recorded in the city.

A Red Flag Warning was also issued for the area Friday, meaning the danger for fire is very high because of a combination of high winds and parched earth. The warning has been extended through 6 p.m. Saturday.

“We’re encouraging New Yorkers to, you know, don’t throw cigarette butts on the ground. Making sure that, as the passerby did today, you’re reporting any fires you see. You shouldn’t be grilling in the parks,” said New York City Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol.

“We were extremely lucky by the passerby who saw something but also did something. They notified the FDNY, and it was a quick response,” Mayor Eric Adams said.

After six wildfires on Staten Island over the last two weeks, Borough President Vito Fossella and FDNY officials plan to urge locals to take preemptive measures to protect their homes.

“We work with the State Department of Environmental Conservation to allow homeowners who live around an area that may be very sensitive or prone of brush fires to obtain a permit and cut back some of the Phragmites with the goal to protect their homes and the people who live in those homes,” Fossella said.

Firefighters in New Jersey have been battling a string of wildfires in recent days, including one that started early Friday morning in the Palisades. That fire sent clouds of smoke across the Hudson River into parts of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

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