Throughout the night of November 8th, my sleep was pierced by the smell of a burning forest. It is a familiar scent to me, something I associate with

The Northeast Is Becoming Fire Country

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2024-11-20 16:30:02

Throughout the night of November 8th, my sleep was pierced by the smell of a burning forest. It is a familiar scent to me, something I associate with working as a wildland firefighter in California, New Mexico, and Arizona. In my dream state, I did not wonder why the smell of a wildfire was wafting through the window of my apartment on the south side of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. In the morning, I woke to a bizarre, upside-down world in which I was receiving messages about a forest fire in the middle of New York City. Even the preëminent historian of fire, Stephen Pyne, sent an e-mail from his home in Arizona with the subject heading “Fire in Brooklyn?!”

The Prospect Park fire started sometime in the evening in a sloped wooded area of the Ravine, which is known as Brooklyn’s only forest. The flames burned through the leaf litter and established in downed logs, illuminating the trees in an orange glow. Over the next few hours, it burned a hill bordered by a winding asphalt path; by 10 P.M., firefighters had fully contained it at a couple of acres.

I like to turn to the New York Post for thoughtful environmental reporting, and, after the fire, I read with interest that “scores of squirrels, birds, raccoons, skunks and other critters that call the Brooklyn oasis home were forced to flee the burned sector—and it could take years for them to return, according to wildlife experts.” A park official also warned that it would take “many seasons” for the forest to recover from the loss of “all” its ground cover.