Firefighters knock down brush fire in Flanders woods

A brush fire ignited in the woods off Pleasure Drive in Flanders this afternoon.

Hampton Bays, East Quogue and Riverhead fire departments each responded with a brush truck to assist Flanders Fire Department knock down the fire. The alarm was called at 3:34 p.m.

The brush fire burned three to four acres, Flanders Fire Chief Joe Petit said.

Pleasure Drive was closed to traffic in both directions while firefighters worked to contain and extinguish the brush fire.

The woods in that area contain a large quantity of downed dead oak trees, following a massive die-off in the middle of the last decade. That left a huge amount of fuel on the forest floor. The condition of the woodlands concerned former Flanders fire chief Todd Ryan, who spoke out about the government’s failure to maintain preserved woodlands by clearing dead trees and its failure to maintain fire access roads — conditions which Ryan said put firefighters, homes and residents in harm’s way. See May 2, 2013 story.

There are more than 11,000 acres of preserved pine barrens adjoining hundreds of homes south of Flanders Road. The woodlands haven’t burned — a natural, cyclical occurrence in the fire-dependent pine barrens ecosystem — since the 1960s, Ryan told RiverheadLOCAL last year.

“It’s bound to happen, and when it does, it’s going to be a disaster,” Ryan said.

A fire in the area has the potential to be far worse than the 1995 Sunrise fire that scorched more than 7,000 acres of pine barrens, Ryan warned.

Fire departments are on alert today due to dry conditions and strong winds, which led authorities to issue a warning about enhanced risk of wildfire spread for today. Conditions will be even more favorable for fire spread tomorrow, according to the National Weather Service, which this afternoon issued a red flag warning for Long Island tomorrow, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl
Click thumbnails to enlarge images
{gallery}2014/slideshows/2014_0423_brush_fire{/gallery}