The New Jersey Forest Fire Service (NJFFS) is an agency within the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Founded in 1906 with a focus on wildland fire suppression and fire protection, the Forest Fire Service is the largest firefighting department within the state of New Jersey in the United States with 85 full-time professional firefighting personnel (career civil service positions), and approximately 2,000 trained part-time on-call wildland firefighters throughout the state. Its mission is to protect "life and property, as well as the state's natural resources, from wildfire".New Jersey Forest Fire Service, "About Us" and "Our Organization". Retrieved 19 April 2015.

The New Jersey Forest Fire Service covers a primary response area of approximately 3.72 million acres comprising 77% of the state's land area and administered by three regional divisions.New Jersey Forest Fire Service. Administrative Boundaries (map). Retrieved 18 April 2015. Note: While the map delineates 3.72 million acres as the primary response area, other New Jersey Forest Fire Service publications list figures indicating a responsibility over 3.1 million or 3.2 million acres. These divisions are divided into 29 sections, and further into 269 districts overseen by Section firewardens. All Firewardens are sworn law enforcement officers with authority pursuant to state law. These powers include broad authority to compel actions for fire prevention, to investigate a wildfire's cause (accidental or intentional), and exercise arrest and citation powers in matters involving criminal and civil liability. Firewardens are qualified incident commanders and direct operations of fire crews in suppression efforts. This primary response area includes the state's rural and suburban areas, as well as its public state parks and forests.

Because of the extent of suburban development in New Jersey, many of the state's residents live within a transition zone known as the wildland–urban interface which provides both increased challenges to fire suppression tactics and increased risk of fires causing damage to homes and property. In 2014, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service responded to 1,063 wildfire events that damaged 6,692 acres of wildlands. As a preventative measure, the service conducted controlled burns or prescribed burns on 15,326 acres statewide.Office of Management and Budget (New Jersey Department of the Treasury), "Department and Branch Recommendations: Environmental Protection" in State of New Jersey: The Governor's FY2016 Detailed Budget (2015), D-113 through D-115. Retrieved August 13, 2015. Note: the budget appropriation of $8,775,000 is for "Forest Resource Management" which includes the Forest Fire Service appropriation and other programmes directed by the Division of Parks and Forestry, and enumerates $2,259,000 for specifically "Fire Fighting Costs".

History

Establishment and development

Before the twentieth century, very little effort was made to control wildfires in New Jersey.State Fire Wardens of Division B, New Jersey Forest Fire Service (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006), 9. According to reports of the state geologist, wildland fires in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey often burned 70,000 to 100,000 acres in any given year. In 1893, The New York Times reported "every year brings a reign of terror to the people living on and about the pine lands, and each year from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 worth of property is destroyed by fire"."Forest Fires in New Jersey. The annual Loss Over $1,000,000 – Need of Legislation to Save Timber Lands", The New York Times (April 16, 1893), 10. In an 1896 report, state geologist John Conover Smock estimated New Jersey's loss in timber at a million dollars annually over the previous twenty years and that forest fire was also "a source of great danger to the cranberry plantations".Damage by Forest Fires, New Jersey Legislature to be Asked for Protection" The New York Times (January 5, 1896), 16.John Conover Smock, "Natural Parks and Forest Reservations: Administrative Report", in New Jersey Geological Survey, The Annual Report of the State Geologist for the Year 1896 (Trenton: MacCrellish & Quigley, 1897). Shortly after his appointment as chief of the Division of Forestry (later renamed the United States Forest Service), Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946), was commissioned to study forest fires and the best means for fighting them and to "show by actual measurements the loss to the State of New Jersey from forest fires". Pinchot submitted a report in which he recommended that the government make active efforts toward forest fire control to protect forests for the public benefit.Gifford Pinchot, "A Study of Forest Fires and Wood Production in Southern New Jersey" in New Jersey Geological Survey, The Annual Report of the State Geologist for 1898 (Trenton: MacCrellish & Quigley, 1897). Appendix.

The state legislature created the New Jersey Forest Fire Service with an act signed into law by Governor Edward C. Stokes on April 18, 1906. The law went into effect on July 4, 1906.P.L. 1906, ch. 123 printed in Forest Park Reservation Commission, State of New Jersey, Reports of the Forest Park Reservation Commission of New Jersey: Second Annual Report for the Year Ending October 31st 1906 (Trenton: MacCrellish & Quigley, 1907). The Forest Park Reservation Commission, created the year before also at Pinchot's recommendation, regarded the creation of the Forest Fire Service as that body's most important accomplishment of the year. Theophilius P. Price, of Ocean County, was appointed the state's first firewarden. The state asked 81 rural townships to appoint township firewardens and provided them with shovels. Only three fires were reported in 1906, and the entire cost for fire fighting from July through November that year was $5.30 for one fire in Shamong.

By 1908, the Forest Fire Service comprised 99 township wardens, 120 district wardens—respectively paid $20 and $10 annually—and 81 unpaid railroad wardens to prevent fires along railroad right-of-ways. In 1911, the Weeks Act passed in response to a deadly and costly 1910 fire season (which included the Great Fire of 1910 and Baudette Fire of 1910) provided New Jersey sufficient funding to begin regular fire patrols to protect the watersheds of navigable streams. This was supplemented by the U.S. Postmaster General who ordered rural mail carriers to act as fire patrolmen in New Jersey and other states. Improvements in fire detection included the building of a system of fire observation towers, the first use of motor vehicles in fighting and patrolling efforts. Further expansion of fire protection was enabled by federal funds appropriated through the passage of the Clarke–McNary Act in 1924. From 1933 to 1942, during the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) improved New Jersey's system of state parks and forest for recreation and built firebreaks and fireroads within these tracts for fire prevention.

The agency's capabilities have been enhanced through the use of aircraft in fire suppression. At first, the Forest Fire Service used aircraft to observe and identify fires, beginning in 1927 under the efforts of state firewarden Leonidas Coyle. However, aircraft would not be used actively to suppress fires through aerial bombardment until 1961 when "a Stearman biplane operating out of Coyle Field managed to drop 5,220 gallons of retardant on various fires, at 100 gallons a pop".New Jersey Forest Fire Service, "Wildfire Suppression: Use of Aircraft". Retrieved 23 April 2015.

Notable fire incidents

Because of nature of the fuels and vegetations within the Pine Barrens, the region has experienced many of the state's significant-impact fires that burned a large number of acres and property. In late April 1922, a fire that burned of Ocean and Monmouth counties also threatened the country estates of wealthy early twentieth-century American businessmen, John D. Rockefeller (near Lakewood), Arthur Brisbane (at Lane's Mills), and George J. Gould's estate known as "Georgian Court" (now the location of Georgian Court University). This fire caused approximately $3,000,000 of damage in 1922 U.S. dollars."$3,000,000 Forest Fire Sweeps Jersey," The New York Times, April 28, 1922. In two days, on April 20 and 21 1963, a fast-growing wildfire destroyed of land and consumed 186 homes and 197 buildings. A few residents were killed in the incident.Thomas J. Belton, Protecting New Jersey's Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011).

Several fires in the last two decades have been connected to accidents at United States military's Warren Grove Gunnery Range in Ocean County's Warren Grove. In April 1999, Nearly of forest, wetlands, cedar swamp and cranberry bogs burned after a Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II from the 111th Fighter Wing plane dropped a "dummy" bomb more than a mile from its target. In June 2001, a forest fire occurred when an Air National Guard plane dropped a 25-pound practice bomb at the range. On May 15, 2007, flares dropped from an F-16 belonging to the 177th Fighter Wing set off a large wildfire that consumed more than 18,000 acres (73 km2) of the Pinelands and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents."Military must fix communication", Courier-Post, July 28, 2007. Accessed August 11, 2007. "On May 15, a fighter pilot mistakenly released flares while on a training mission over the Warren Grove Gunnery Range in Ocean County. At the time, the ground below was extremely dry. The flares hitting the ground touched off a fire that burned of Pinelands, injured two people, destroyed four homes and damaged 53 other homes."

Several wildfire incidents have resulted in firefighter fatalities. Over four days in late May 1936, several fires torched of woods in the Pine Barrens, including a fire at Chatsworth in Burlington County. It is believed that shifting winds during a backfire operation took the lives of two fire wardens; and three men from the Civilian Conservation Corps' Company 225.National Wildfire Coordinating Group, Historical Wildland Firefighter Fatalities 1910–1996. Retrieved July 15, 2015."Jersey Fire Duty Causes CCC Strike, 170 Demand Day's Rest After 24-Hours of Fighting Blaze in Wooded Areas", The New York Times (May 28, 1936), 14."Five Killed, Many Injured in Greatest Forest Fires in the History of Two Counties - More Than 20,000 Acres Involved in Four-Day Conflagration in the Area from Chatsworth to Tuckerton and Manahawkin - 2,000 Men Fought Fire - Men Were Trapped While Fighting", New Jersey Mirror (May 27, 1936)."Shift of Wind Traps Victims: Last of Missing Fire-Fighters Found as 133-Square-Mile Blaze Is Finally Stopped", The Asbury Park Press (May 26, 1936). On July 22, 1977, the Forest Fire Service and local fire departments responded to a fire burning in Bass River State Forest in Burlington County located north of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Extreme wind shifts and fire behavior caused units to be pulled out from the fire, but flames engulfed Engine Number 731, a specially equipped 10-wheel tank truck from the Eagleswood Fire Company resulting in the deaths of its four firemen, including a chief and assistant chief.William Aaronson, "Strong Winds Blames in Fire Death", The Beacon (Tuckerton, New Jersey) (July 28, 1977). A memorial to the fallen firefighters from the 1936 and 1977 Bass River Fires is located in the state forest along Greenbush Road in Bass River Township, New Jersey.Bass River Fire Fighters Memorial - Bass River Twp., NJ - Firefighter Memorials on Waymarking.com". Retrieved July 15, 2015.Wildland Firefighters' Monument and Memorial Sites (updated last in 2003), from WildlandFire.com: Home of the Wildland Firefighter. Retrieved July 15, 2015.

Organization

Mission