New York Isn’t Ready to Fight More Wildfires

A photo collage, photo of smoke billowing above trees in Jennings Creek layered over an photo of brush on fire.

Photos: Chris Johnson; dmytrogilitukha via Canva. | Illustration: Leor Stylar

The Jennings Creek wildfire burned over 5,000 acres across New York and New Jersey and took 14 days to contain. | Photos: Chris Johnson; dmytrogilitukha via Canva. | Illustration: Leor Stylar

New York could see more frequent and destructive blazes, but the state doesn’t have enough forest rangers and firefighters to respond to the growing threat.

Nathan Porceng · November 26, 2024

Staying Focused

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Joseph Nickischer can’t remember wildfires like this.

“We’ve had fires that lasted this long, but not this big,” Nickischer, a former chief and current volunteer with the Patterson Volunteer Fire Department, told New York Focus. “You’re talking fire lines. … You’re not measuring them in a couple hundred feet. You’re measuring them in miles.”

Wildfires torched over 6,000 acres in New York in the last few weeks. The Hudson Valley and the Catskills bore the brunt of the damage, though smaller brush fires broke out across New York City. Hundreds of people evacuated their homes. Schools closed. Dariel Vasquez, an 18-year-old New York state parks department employee, died while battling the blazes. This October was the driest in well over a century, creating the conditions for November’s wildfires to spark and rapidly spread.

KEY POINTS

Wildfires have burned over 6,000 acres in New York over the past few weeks and could become more frequent and severe as climate change causes extreme swings in New York’s weather patterns.

Forest rangers do not have enough resources to deal with the growing risk. Right now, around 100 field rangers manage over 6 million acres of land.

Leaders of the forest rangers union have pushed the state to implement reforms to its wildfire strategy, including adding rangers and making their pension plan more attractive to potential recruits.

If Governor Kathy Hochul signs the Climate Change Superfund Act, which would require large industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses to pay for climate adaptation measures, the legislature could allocate some of the funds to the rangers.

Volunteer fire departments around the state do not have enough funding for safety equipment and are facing personnel shortages. Since the 1990s, the state’s volunteer firefighter ranks have plummeted by around 30 percent.

But as the risk of fires in New York has grown over the years, one thing hasn’t changed: the number of park rangers and volunteer firefighters responsible for preventing them and putting them out. Former and current leaders of the state’s rangers union, part of the Police Benevolent Association of New York State, have expressed fears that blazes could get even bigger and have lobbied state leaders to prioritize wildfire management and better support the rangers.

“We have 6 million acres of public land in New York state that 100 rangers are protecting,” Robert Praczkajlo, a Department of Environmental Conservation ranger and union leader, told New York Focus. Rangers have nowhere near the staffing and funding they need to perform their everyday duties, he said — let alone combat increasingly frequent and severe wildfires.

Lack of personnel is also a major issue for volunteer firefighters, who serve for free in their spare time. Volunteer firefighters far outnumber DEC rangers and are New York’s first and most significant defenders against forest fires. But over the past few decades, the ranks of the state’s volunteer fire departments have shrunk by nearly a third. Nickischer said he doesn’t know how to solve the personnel shortage. “There’s no solid fix.”

“It’s a really difficult situation,” said Praczkajlo. As bad as the fires this past month have been, Praczkajlo fears things could get a lot worse. “These massive fires are burning down in the southern part of the state,” he said, “but if that happened in the Adirondacks right now, under those same conditions, or in the higher elevations of the Catskill Park, it would be millions of acres.”

Historically, wildfires rarely troubled New Yorkers, burning around 1,400 acres in an average year. In 1990, the DEC shut down the last of its fire towers, used for over a century to scout for smoke and flames. Today, the towers are tourist attractions.

But in recent years, advocates, academics, and union leaders have warned of the growing risk of widespread wildfires. One reason is that the state’s climate, which had long stifled fires, could soon turn, Andrew Vander Yacht, an ecologist at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, told New York Focus last year. That would cause swings from periods of heavy precipitation to extended droughts, causing rainfall to concentrate in fewer, heavier events and creating drier and more flammable forest conditions. Vander Yacht’s predictions appear to have come true. He thinks that New York will see even longer droughts than the one preceding this fall’s fires, and more destructive fires as a result.

“I’ve worked just over a thousand hours of overtime. I’m not required to work that amount of overtime. But I just can’t say no when the phone rings and dispatch says somebody needs help.”

—Robert Praczkajlo, Department of Environmental Conservation

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation employs around 130 rangers who oversee millions of acres of land in the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and other state forests. Just over 100 of them actively work in the field, conducting search and rescues, enforcing conservation laws, and fighting wildfires.

But they don’t have the resources to deal with an increasing fire volume. “They don’t have shit for money,” said Dave Holden, a Catskills-based environmental activist.

The DEC needs at least 50 more field rangers, Praczkajlo said. The staffing shortage is so bad that rangers do not even have time to access and spend the limited wildfire funds they have at their disposal, he said.

In February, Praczkajlo’s predecessor at the union, Art Perryman, went to the state legislature asking for reforms to New York’s wildfire strategy. He proposed maximizing opportunities for rangers to gain experience fighting out-of-state wildfires, establishing a dedicated wildfire protection fund, and replacing the state’s aging inventory of forest firefighting equipment. He also told New York Focus that the state needs to use more prescribed burns, which are currently banned in the state’s largest forested areas.

“The Forest Rangers are the front line of defense when it comes to large destructive wildfires and have been since our inception,” Perryman testified. “We do not currently have the resources and support that we need to adequately address that mission.”

Governor Kathy Hochul acknowledged the growing threat of wildfires fueled by climate change last month when she announced the rollout of a data tool to warn New Yorkers about dangerous weather conditions. But the state has not taken up the union’s funding and staffing recommendations, Praczkajlo said.

“I’ve worked just over a thousand hours of overtime,” he said. “I’m not required to work that amount of overtime. But I just can’t say no when the phone rings and dispatch says somebody needs help.”

DEC spokesperson Denis Slattery said in a statement that the agency has expanded the rangers’ ranks by graduating three cohorts from the service’s required six-month basic training academy in recent years. According to Praczkajlo, the academy’s next class, which graduates this December, will yield just nine new rangers, and there will not be another class until 2026.

Staffing shortages make it harder for DEC rangers to fight out-of-state fires, too. These deployments help prepare rangers to combat forest fires closer to home. In 2022, Quebec sent a 20-person crew to help New York battle a 142-acre wildfire in the Hudson Valley. But last year, when wildfires burned over 12 million acres in Quebec and Nova Scotia, New York sent just 16 of 70 available forest rangers. Perryman said New York’s failure to reciprocate the Canadians’ generosity cost the state’s rangers critical experience.

Some lawmakers are taking note.

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Perryman’s testimony was “prophetic,” said state Senator Peter Harckham, who chairs his chamber’s Environmental Conservation Committee and represents part of the Hudson Valley. He said that if Hochul signs the Climate Change Superfund Act, which would require large industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses to pay for climate adaptation measures, the legislature could allocate some of the funds to the rangers.

Harkham is sponsoring another bill that would establish a climate resiliency office and a task force charged with identifying and planning for climate-related emergencies, including wildfires. Praczkajlo agreed that planning and coordination are crucial. If New York had shifted resources to the southern part of the state earlier, when dry and windy weather patterns first emerged, first responders could have quelled the wildfires there much quicker and prevented much damage, he said. The bill is currently in committee.

“We need resiliency on all levels,” said Harckham. “The same areas that are now getting pounded with wildfires were getting pounded with floods just a few months ago. This is the reality of climate change.”

Lawmakers also want to improve the rangers’ pension plan. Rangers have to serve 25 years before they can retire; the legislature has passed a bill five times that would lower that to 20 years, the retirement cutoff for many other state and local law enforcement officers. Praczkajlo said the longer service requirement has hurt recruitment and prompted experienced rangers to abandon the DEC for other law enforcement agencies. But the bill has been vetoed each time, most recently by Hochul last month.

Additional ranger staffing could also free up rangers to pass their experience on to local volunteer fire departments, whose ranks provide the overwhelming bulk of the state’s wildfire response — and who lack personnel, training, and resources themselves.

27 members of the Patterson Volunteer Fire Department in the forest.

Volunteer firefighters from the Patterson Volunteer Fire Department and other departments deployed to fight the Jennings Creek wildfire. November 11, 2024. | John Barretto and Angela Maass

When wildfires break out, the burden overwhelmingly falls on New York’s roughly 80,000 volunteer firefighters, who are grappling with funding and personnel shortages of their own.

Jason Smith, chief of the Berne Fire District, led volunteer firefighters battling the Jennings Creek wildfire, which burned over 5,000 acres across New York and New Jersey and took 14 days to contain. Smith told New York Focus that he saw crews from other departments show up with the wrong protective equipment and hoses because they weren’t properly trained or couldn’t afford the right gear.

Specialized wildfire equipment protects firefighters from heat exhaustion and makes it easier for them to maneuver across wooded and rocky terrains — but it’s expensive. Boots alone cost hundreds of dollars. Outfitting just one volunteer can cost up to $1,000. Nickischer said his department, which services a mixed urban-rural corner of Putnam County, typically spends around $5,000 annually on wildfire equipment. “We try to outfit a couple of people per year so they’re not going out there in blue jeans and sneakers,” he joked.

New York’s volunteer fire departments receive some funding through a state-administered program paid for by the US Forest Service. Departments can receive up to $2,500 in matching funds for wildfire equipment like hoses, hard hats, and portable pumps. Nickischer said his department applies almost every year, but there’s no guarantee the state will approve it, and the funding doesn’t cover all of their costs. Smith would like the state to extend the program to cover every qualifying department every year.

The state also provides some tax and retirement benefits for volunteers and recently began issuing stipends for certain firefighting courses, but offers little additional assistance. Nickischer likes that volunteer service keeps costs low for taxpayers, but he thinks the state should at least reimburse volunteers for basic expenses like gas.

“They don’t have shit for money.”

—Dave Holden

Nickischer insisted that a lack of personnel, not money, is the most significant issue facing volunteer fire departments. As New York’s rural population declines and people devote less time to all forms of volunteering, departments like his have had a tough time maintaining their ranks. Since the 1990s, the number of volunteer firefighters in the state has plummeted by around 30 percent, according to the Firefighters Association of the State of New York, while calls for service have increased by 29 percent. It’s unclear how many of the approximately 80,000 volunteer firefighters left are active, available, and qualified to fight wildfires.

More volunteers make fighting wildfires a lot easier. Nickischer noted that New York City responds to fires with overwhelming force. Around 100 firefighters responded to a two-acre brush fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park this month.

But New York’s rural and mountain communities bear the biggest brunt of wildfires. Nickischer said his department, located in a town of around 11,000 people near the Connecticut border, has just 40 active firefighters, only five to 10 of whom typically respond to any given call. They have to call volunteers from other jurisdictions to help with anything larger than a small backyard fire, he said.

Last June, Governor Hochul’s office announced that 105 volunteer firefighters received payments from the state’s first round of training stipends. Robert Leonard, a spokesperson for the state Firefighters Association, told New York Focus that the $10 million program could boost recruiting for volunteer departments, but that it’s too soon to tell.

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Vander Yacht, the ecologist at SUNY ESF, recommends that New York actively manage its forests to minimize the risk of wildfires. Controlled burns can clear flammable underbrush and promote the growth of fire-resistant tree species, but the DEC doesn’t allow them in the millions of acres encompassed by the Catskill and Adirondack parks.

Holden hopes the wildfires are a wake-up call for New Yorkers and that the state takes action in time to save its rural and mountain communities. “All you have to do is look at what happened in California [with] the Paradise fire,” he said, or in Hawai’i last year. “There’s no reason it can’t happen here.”