The day Monroe burned

PHOTO COURTESY OF WWW.SECTIONB10.ORG

The photograph, taken from above Matchaponix Road and the power lines, shows part of the April 1985 wildfire burn in the area of today’s Pines at Monroe development. MONROE — From Redmond’s Hill, where the gazebo sits at Thompson Park, one can look beyond Lake Manalapan into the local Pine Barrens.

Easily seen is the swath of evergreen pitch pine between Old Forge and Matchaponix roads. Twenty-five years ago, from Redmond’s Hill, I looked into these pines and saw a wall of fire … By mid to late April 1985, Central Jersey and South Jersey were in a severe drought. It was the middle of the state’s spring wildfire season,

normally running March 15 to May 15 because of low humidity, high winds, leaves accumulated on the ground and, with new leaves yet to cover the trees, no shade, allowing direct sunlight to hit the ground.

John Rieth, the state Forest Fire Service warden covering the Monroe area, stands with his brush truck, B-10, built for fighting wildfires. JOE SAPIA Another component of the fire formula was locale. The New Jersey Pine Barrens are highly susceptible to fire because of their well-drained, sandy soil and dry, dense and highly flammable vegetation.

While the state- and federal-protected “Pinelands” may be in South Jersey, the Pine Barrens ecosystem extends into Central Jersey. The Spotswood Outlier, disconnected from the main Pine Barrens, is an approximately 12-mile-by-12- mile ecosystem, basically running from Route 535 in the west to Route 79 in the east, north from the Runyon Watershed to Englishtown in the south.

Locally, the outlier includes the Jamesburg Park Conservation Area, the Duhernal Watershed and the section of Monroe north of Jamesburg. If you are in the Pines at Monroe development, you are in the Pine Barrens!

On Friday, April 19, 1985, environmental conditions — recorded at 10 a.m. at the state Forest Fire Service’s Cedar Bridge Lookout Tower in Ocean County — were fire-conducive: an 18 mph wind and low humidity of 24 percent, for example.

At 10:58 a.m., the Forest Fire Service observer, sitting 65 feet above ground in the Jamesburg Lookout Tower on the high ground of Thompson Park, saw smoke coming from the local pine woods. The compass reading was 26 degrees, or generally north-northeast, about two miles from the tower, or along Old Forge Road.

The tower put the word out, beginning one of the largest firefighting efforts in township history.

The fire

The fire began in the woods to the west of Old Forge Road — basically between today’s Boxwood Drive and Chestnut Court — according to the investigation conducted by then-Section Warden Hal Stillwell of the Forest Fire Service.

“All of a sudden, I smell smoke,” said Ted Kasubinski, now 62, who was working on his house under construction on Old Forge Road near the Helmetta boundary.

The smoke came from the direction of Jamesburg. But the house had no utilities, meaning Kasubinski did not have a telephone to call for help. So, he ran to a neighbor’s to have the fire reported.

“I’m watching the fire spreading across the ground,” Kasubinski said. “It came to Old Forge Road and I said, ‘Good, it’s going to stop.’ Well, it didn’t. It shot up pine trees, went across the street at the height of the pine trees. Then, it took off.”

It headed east toward Palomba’s Acres, a section of woods and field that is now the area of Veterans Park and the Dynasty Estates development.

In Helmetta, firefighter John Talnagi was working at the George W. Helme Snuff Mill.

“I remember seeing the smoke plume and going to the roof of the factory with some other guys to try to see what was going on,” said Talnagi, now 52. “When we got to the roof, the fire was going pretty good.

“Then, the [Helmetta Fire Department] siren started to blare,” Talnagi said.

“I was at my sister Theresa’s house [one of the snuff mill houses in Helmetta] when the call came in,” said Christine Konjura Reid, now 51, whose then-boyfriend and now-husband Billy Reid, now 51, was a Helmetta firefighter. “My brother-in-law, Walter [Maciewicz], was also a fireman at that time, so we were sitting on the front porch listening to the fire scanner. You could see the smoke billowing above the buildings and trees.”

Don McPherson, another Helmetta firefighter, was at home, “painting the ceiling on the porch,” when the call came in.

McPherson, now 76, and Talnagi both responded to the firehouse, each manning a famed HFD “Yellowbird” — a four-wheel-drive, military surplus Jeep-like vehicle that was painted yellow and used to fight wildfires.

Driving his Yellowbird, McPherson was accompanied by firefighters Ron “Doc” Wilson and Steve Spack. Kasubinski recalled the McPherson Yellowbird “roaring in” along Old Forge Road.

“They said, ‘We’re not going to let your house burn,’ ” Kasubinski said.

On the other Yellowbird, Talnagi recalled, he and three other firefighters “went to the head of the fire to try to cut it off. However, the wind was pushing the fire very fast.

“I remember driving into the woods, a hundred yards or more in front,” Talnagi said. “As we drove in, we realized the fire was moving faster than anticipated and [we] had to get out and back to the road.”

As the Talnagi Yellowbird retreated, the fire blazed across what had been its path.

The McPherson Yellowbird took a sand road into Palumbo’s Acres.

“We pushed this one tree down [with the Yellowbird], the radiator hose broke, sprayed water all over the engine, drowned it out,” McPherson said. “We radioed for help and nobody knew where we were.”

McPherson, Wilson and Spack wet the area down with the water they had. With the fire approaching, they did the common-sense thing in a wildfire: get to already burned ground.

Despite the fire being into the treetops, they found a spot that was low enough to jump, thanks to the Applegarth Fire Company having been in the area and wetting it down, McPherson said.

As for the McPherson Yellowbird, the fire “destroyed the truck, burned the tires off, warped the frame,” he said.

“The main problem was the lack of water, so pumpers with large tanks and tanker trucks were called in to supply us with water,” Talnagi said.

Old Forge Road, in those days, did not have fire hydrants.

The fire crossed roads, changed direction, threatened hundreds of homes and caused the evacuation of 400 people.

An estimated 500 firefighters from the Forest Fire Service and an estimated 60 to 70 fire departments from Middlesex, Mercer, Somerset, Monmouth and Ocean counties fought the fire. An airplane dumped water on the fire.

“Residents of [Old] Forge Road were on their roofs with garden hoses, trying to keep their homes wet,” Talnagi said.

Stillwell guided the firefighting from a helicopter flying above the scene.

From Stillwell’s report:

“Backfire,” referring to a firefighting technique of starting a fire to back into the wildfire to put it out, “[at] Spotswood-Gravel Hill Road. Did not hold, had to go to development and stop fire, there. … Burned to a swamp and dropped several spot fires. Had to send in crews to work on these.

“Had a [weather] front come through at 1500 (3 p.m.) … and turned what was burning on right flank into a head fire. … Had to shift forces from developments to Matchaponix Road to protect homes.”

The fire was brought under control on Saturday, April 20, at 3 p.m. Finally, it was declared out on May 7, some 18 days after it started.

It burned approximately 700 acres between Manalapan Brook-Old Forge Road, Outcalt, Inwood Estates and the Lower Road to Matchaponix, including woods developed into the Pines at Monroe, Dynasty Estates and Whispering Woods.

A few firefighters suffered non-life-threatening injuries. But, although some homes were slightly damaged and a few outbuildings destroyed, remarkably not one residence was destroyed.

Not only was Kasubinski’s house untouched by the fire — per the promise of the Helmetta firefighters — but it remains his and his wife Barbara’s home.

The fire, however, prompted the state Department of Environmental Protection, of which the Forest Fire Service is a part, to close about 1.8 million acres of woods in Central Jersey and South Jersey for 15 days because of dry conditions.

The fire was determined human-caused, as are nearly all New Jersey wildfires. But no determination was made whether it was arson or accidental.

“This time of year, occasionally, I think of that day and how all of us firefighters came together and worked to help extinguish that blaze,” Talnagi said.

“Our son, Joe, is now a firefighter in Helmetta and he will ask questions from time to time about the big fire on [Old] Forge Road,” Christine Reid said. “We do talk about it, especially if we are traveling on [Old] Forge Road.”

“That was a day to remember, I’ll tell you,” McPherson said. Bad for people, good for the ecosystem.

While the fire was frightening, it was also enlightening: Look what could happen in the Pine Barrens, where fire is a way of life. So, be vigilant.

“Whatever else they do, men in the Pine Barrens are firefighters throughout their lives,” according to John McPhee’s classic book, “The Pine Barrens.”

Two, it showed what a litter-bug society we are: The side of Matchaponix Road was a stream of a bazillion beer bottles, flung over the years from motor vehicles and now revealed because vegetation was burned away.

Lastly, disturbance, such as fire, is needed to keep the ecologically important Pine Barrens the Pine Barrens. Generally, rare plant and animal species, for which the Pine Barrens are internationally known, exist there because it is in an early succession stage. Without disturbance, such as cutting out the hardwoods or a hurricane blowing all the trees down, the pine woods (the early succession stage) would change to a hardwood forest (a later stage).

Without a fire, for example, oaks that can tolerate shade will grow under the pine canopy and, eventually, shade out the pines, which need sunlight. (Along Helmetta Road, between Cherry Blossom Drive and the Jamesburg boundary, notice pitch pine growing along the road where there is sunlight, but hardwoods dominating the shady woods. The same is evident along the utility line right of way between Old Forge Road and Manalapan Brook.)

Fire moves through the woods, killing the hardwoods but generally not harming the pitch pines. Pitch pine cones are two varieties, open and closed. Heat, at a temperature likely to be reached only in fire, pops open the closed cones, dispersing seeds.

With the underbrush and vegetative litter burned away, a forest floor conducive to rebirth has been created. Seeds litter charred ground, now filled with nutrients from a fire, and pine growth begins.

As for the charred pines, they are not dead. Pine needles will spout directly from the trunks, a head-start on oaks that will only grow from roots.

Insects will take over the dead hardwoods. Birds, such as woodpeckers, looking for a meal will follow. Woodpeckers will dig holes into the trees, and cavity-nesting birds will use them. Dead hardwoods will decompose, adding more nutrients to the soil.

Then hardwoods will start growing again, looking to overtake the pines, staring the cycle again.

Now look at the woods that burned. Can you tell there was a major fire there 25 years ago?

Today

Firefighters are aware of wildfire. That is why the Forest Fire Service operates the Jamesburg Lookout Tower; the service’s full-time section warden, John Rieth, is very visible as he patrols in brush truck B-10; and area fire companies — such as Monroe No. 1, Helmetta, Spotswood, Old Bridge and South Old Bridge — have wildfire brush trucks.

A trench dug to bare soil only a few feet wide can stop a light wildfire. On the other hand, no fire equipment can stop a big enough wildfire.

So, what can happen today? The answer is mixed.

There is plenty of pine woods around, but less than in 1985. More houses — huge and expensive ones — dot these woods, however.

The woods provide a playground for hikers, birdwatchers and blueberry- and mushroom-pickers. But it is also a playground for partiers and their campfires.

A water supply is more readily available from fire hydrants, but there are fewer fire company water-tankers to haul in water. Fortunately, the Helmetta, Monroe No. 3, Applegarth, South Old Bridge and Cranbury fire companies still operate tankers.

Parts of the Jamesburg Park Conservation Area, for example, present a fire danger beyond the normal one of a Pine Barrens woods. Gypsy moths have weakened trees, leaving standing dry fuel or, thanks to various storms, fallen dry fuel. But the Forest Fire Service is considering controlled burns, or fires under set conditions to reduce the wildfire threat, in the conservation area.

As in 1985, an irrational fear of a Pine Barrens fire threat should not exist.

Not all sections of the Pine Barrens have a serious fire threat. A pitch pine-dominated ecosystem is the biggest fire threat, but Manalapan Brook, obviously, is not going to burn.

And my family has continuously lived in the local Pine Barrens for more than 100 years, and I do not plan on moving. I remain in awe — and protective — of these magnificent Pine Barrens, glancing over a shoulder, knowing fire is a way of life in the Pines.

Joe Sapia, 53, of Monroe often walks, writes about and creates art on the local Pine Barrens. He can be reached at Snufftin@aol.com.