New Jersey is entering an especially risky wildfire season, officials say

New Jersey fire officials say the state is entering a difficult time as peak wildfire season starts this month amid a number of stark climate-related challenges.

The Garden State has already seen a 266% increase in wildfires this year compared to 2024, according to top fire and environmental officials who said the state has remained in a drought since last fall. As of March 13, New Jersey has recorded 381 wildfires that have burned a total of 1,242 acres and threatened more than 100 homes, with three of those fires categorized as major wildfires that exceeded 100 acres.

“We did, in fact, have a drier winter season coming off an incredibly, incredibly dry late summer and fall,” state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette said at a media briefing last week.

January was the “third driest” on record, he said, adding that New Jersey recorded some precipitation increases in February, to “nearly normal” levels, but it wasn't enough to fully replenish reservoirs and groundwater.

The rise in fire activity has severely limited the amount of time and manpower the state’s fire service has to conduct controlled burns, one of its chief means of preventing fires from getting out of control in vulnerable areas.  Bill Donnelly, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, said the agency aims to burn 20,000 to 25,000 acres per year, but said it’s only at about 10% of that target for 2025.

”Things have just been crazy,” Donnelly said. “It's a good thing our guys weren't burning because I don't know that we could have spared them.”

Fire officials’ concerns are underscored by recent fires in the region and beyond. Earlier this month, a fire on Long Island that officials believe originated from s’mores toasting gone awry burned 600 acres in Suffolk County. In January, wildfires in Los Angeles killed more than two dozen people, destroyed more than 18,000 homes and structures and led to about 200,000 people being put under evacuation orders.

Could an LA-like wildfire happen in NJ?

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country, and fire officials say nearly half of the population lives in what is known as a wildland urban interface, or a densely settled area next to undeveloped land susceptible to fires.

The question is: Could New Jersey experience devastating fires similar to those in Los Angeles?

Donnelly said that was “highly unlikely,” and LaTourette pointed to what he said were “vast distinctions” between Los Angeles and even the most densely populated areas of New Jersey.

"We in New Jersey don't deal with the Santa Ana winds, which were a driver there [in LA],” he said.

But in addition to unusually dry conditions, the region has experienced a number of recent high-wind advisories, which can exacerbate fire spread. 

Memo Cedeño Laurent, assistant professor in the environmental health department at the Rutgers School of Public Health, said the risk of similar events is not “completely zero.”

“Let’s be sincere. The weather is in many cases unpredictable. You see it from the frequency of these 100-year floods, 500-year floods,” he said.

Wildfire smoke poses unique health risks

In the summer of 2023, Canada experienced its deadliest wildfire season on record. Smoke from those blazes travelled south, affecting air quality in many parts of the Northeast, including New York and New Jersey, and triggering air quality advisories for more than 100 million Americans.

Cedeño Laurent and his research team at Rutgers collected data on airborne particles from the wildfire smoke in New Jersey at the time. What they found was uniquely toxic, he said.

The particles were so “tiny,” he said, that they could travel to deepest parts of the lungs and become part of the “gas exchange process” between the lungs and the blood.

“These particles can become systemic and they affect basically every single organ of the body,” Cedeño Laurent said, adding that overexposure has been linked to various health issues involving the heart, kidneys and lungs, as well as neurological issues.

The research found that, at the peak of the wildfires in June 2023, there were 10 times more of these toxic particles in the air than what is acceptable under national air quality standards.

“This is by no means safe smoke,” Cedeño Laurent said.