New Jersey is in one of the worst droughts of the last 120 years. I’m not sure how many wildfires they’ve been fighting recently (it’s a lot); I know there have been over 200 brushfires in New York City in just the past couple weeks.
What’s scary is this 2016 column from Rolling Stone, titled Will America’s Worst Wildfire Disaster Happen in New Jersey?:
[…] the single most destructive blaze in U.S. history could occur in the Northeast […] The Pine Barrens is the lone island of contiguous forest [between Richmond and Boston] [covering a 1.1-million-acre tract in southern New Jersey].
Whereas regular fires used to thin out the Pinelands, large swaths have remained relatively untouched for decades due to strict preservation laws. The result is a giant tinderbox of untended woods that’s surrounded by 100,000-person suburbs. A Wildfire Risk Assessment published by New Jersey compared the Pinelands to “an inch of gasoline covering all of south and central New Jersey.”
I think so too!