News and opinion about wildland fire
On Thursday a brush fire near Edison, New Jersey threatened hotels, day care centers, and shipping facilities for UPS and FEDEX before it was contained. One report from NBCNEWYORK said about 250 acres of mostly wetlands burned.
The video above has some good aerial shots, but don’t bother adjusting your audio, since there is none.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Video of smoke explosion at structure fire in New Jersey 
There was a smoke explosion at a structure fire Sunday afternoon in Harrison, New Jersey. According to FirefighterCloseCalls, there were injuries but all are reported to be stable. The image above is a screen grab from the very impressive video below.
The Eastern Area Coordination Center reports that 1,125 people are assigned to incidents in the Eastern Geographic Area, however some of those may be working on incidents unrelated to Hurricane Sandy. But this number does include 11 incident management teams and 41 crews of firefighters that are assigned to hurricane recovery.
Three NIMO Incident Management Teams are assigned:
Two Type 1 Incident Management Teams are assigned:
Six Type 2 Incident Management Teams are assigned:
Below is an interesting photo that the New York City Fire Department posted on their Facebook page showing most of the southern part of Manhattan blacked out due to the hurricane.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on 11 IMTeams and 22 crews working on hurricane recovery At least 11 Incident Management Teams and 22 hand crews are assigned in the eastern United States helping with the recovery from Hurricane Sandy. The numbers provided by various sources vary somewhat, and may be due to some of the resources not being dispatched through the National Interagency Coordination Center, such as an IMTeam from Maine that does not show up on the list below which is from the the Eastern Area Coordination Center. Click on the image to see a larger version.
The crews are working in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.
The Missoulian has an article about more crews headed that way today.
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Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized3 Comments on Update on wildfire resources responding to Hurricane Sandy recovery Since our report yesterday about the wildfire resources being sent to the east coast to assist with the recovery from the impacts of Hurricane Sandy, there has been an increase in the numbers heading east. Yesterday there were 2 Incident Management Teams and 7 crews or portions of crews being mobilized. Today 5 incident management teams and 11 wildfire suppression crews or portions of crews, for a total of more than 200 personnel, are ordered, staged in, or en route to New York, Washington, DC, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. One of the IMTeams is a National Incident Management Organization, or NIMO team. (We need to come up with a better name for these teams. “National Incident Management Organization Team” is almost as bad a term as “fire for resource benefits”.)
The firefighters ordered, en route, staged, or on scene include:
I expect that as responders switch from rescue to recovery and are able to gain access to the impacted areas through blocked roads to access the damage, there will be increasing demands for crews and perhaps IMTeams.
