Wildfire Grows in New Jersey and New York, Despite Modest Rainfall

New York|Wildfire Grows in New Jersey and New York, Despite Modest Rainfall

A wildfire consuming a vast stretch of hilly forest along the New York-New Jersey border continued to grow on Monday despite the first significant rainfall in nearly six weeks, fire officials said. Bone-dry weather and gusts of up to 40 miles per hour are expected to sweep through the region on Tuesday, raising the risk that the fire will continue to spread.

More than 3,500 acres were burning in New Jersey and New York as of Monday night, and the fire was expected to grow to more than 5,000 acres, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said.

About 20 percent of the New Jersey portion of the fire was contained, according to the state’s Forest Fire Service. It was not clear how much of the New York portion of the fire was contained.

The rain on Sunday night, measuring just a quarter of an inch across the region, only temporarily slowed the fire’s growth, said Christopher Franek, an assistant division fire warden for the Forest Fire Service.

“We’re throwing everything we’ve got at it,” he said. “A lot of manual labor is choking on smoke and dust.” Five thousand acres is nearly eight square miles — about a third the size of Manhattan.

Hundreds of firefighters from dozens of fire departments in both states are battling the blaze in a rugged patch of Passaic County in New Jersey and Orange County in New York near the Appalachian Trail.