Brooklyn, New York – An incinerated, rusty microwave, the charred skeleton of a garden chair, a pile of melted garments, and singed scraps of the Holy Bible sat ominously on the forest flooring, alongside a smattering of scorched pinecones.

Below a cover of blackened tree trunks, in a small clearing within the northwest part of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Thursday, the apocalyptic aftermath of a hearth that engulfed a homeless encampment within the park’s woods was nonetheless on show. A hearth truck slowly circled the perimeter of the park whereas a squirrel scampered amongst fallen autumn leaves and parched earth.

Practically every week after the comb hearth, 26-year-old Brooklyn media arts instructor Jake Catalanotto may very well be seen curiously combing the location of the hearth – roughly the scale of two soccer fields – documenting the destruction on his digital camera. The lifelong Brooklyn resident was unnerved by what he noticed.

“There are burned-out husks of electronics and cans and spray cans, mattresses,” Catalanotto, 26, informed Al Jazeera as he described the seared hellscape. “A bit of a kind of issues that you simply put over a hearth to cook dinner over it. Pots and pans.”

Please use warning in accessing the park. Open fires + smoking are prohibited within the park, and any fires must be reported instantly to 911. Prospect Park Alliance + @nycparks are assessing injury within the space impacted by the hearth + will share with the neighborhood methods to assist. pic.twitter.com/37B3ufK27y

— Prospect Park (@prospect_park) November 9, 2024

‘Praying for rain’

October was the driest month on document in New York Metropolis, in accordance with metropolis officers – and between October 29 and November 12, a record-breaking 229 brush fires broke out throughout town’s 5 boroughs. Terribly dry circumstances – brought on by one of many longest droughts in historical past – have turned a lot of the sprawling metropolis’s parks and the state’s forested areas into an enormous tinderbox, placing communities, politicians, and hearth crews on alert.

On Wednesday, a two-alarm brush hearth within the north Manhattan neighbourhood of Inwood Hill Park precipitated smoke plumes to envelope the George Washington Bridge. A day earlier, Lengthy Island volunteer firefighter Jonathan Quiles was arrested on arson prices for allegedly deliberately beginning a brush hearth in Medford, New York. Upstate, alongside Greenwood Lake, which borders each New York and New Jersey, a 5,000-acre blaze killed a parks employee, threatened the evacuation of a number of properties, displaced wildlife, obliterated air high quality, and stirred widespread panic.

In response to the spate of fires, officers have mandated a statewide burn ban till November 30.

“Now shouldn’t be the best time to be burning outside, and I urge everybody to heed our warnings as we proceed to take the mandatory precautions to maintain all New Yorkers protected,” Governor Kathy Hochul stated of statewide precautions.

New York Metropolis has additionally banned out of doors grilling throughout the Massive Apple amid the bone-dry circumstances.

“We’re praying for rain,” embattled Mayor Eric Adams informed reporters huddled on the website of the comb hearth final Friday. “We actually want rain with all of those leaves, and dry floor, and bushes.”

‘There’ll by no means be one other you’

Nobody was injured within the Brooklyn blaze. Officers, who’ve been tight-lipped, are nonetheless probing the hearth’s trigger.

Greater than 100 metropolis firefighters had descended on Prospect Park to fight the hearth, which tore via a hectare (two acres) of the park’s Nethermead meadow space. Steep terrain and unusually windy circumstances initially hampered the “labour-intensive” efforts of firefighters, officers on-scene stated. Viral photographs of town park hearth shortly after it erupted confirmed monumental clouds of smoke rising above a tree line illuminated by the orange, eerie glow of the hearth’s flames. Quickly after, smoke may very well be smelled for miles away.

“That preliminary picture that was shared when the hearth was first reported was horrifying,” Morgan Monaco, the president of the Prospect Park Alliance, informed Al Jazeera.

Park officers stated plant materials overlaying the forest flooring had been torched and a number of bushes, which had been burned, would should be eliminated within the coming weeks and months. The naked space was now prone to soil erosion and potential flooding.

“We’ve obtained to essentially stabilise the realm,” defined Monaco, who blamed the hearth on the drought, because of local weather change. “As early as subsequent spring, we hope to have the ability to begin planting. However it is going to take a number of planting seasons to replant lots of the plant materials that was misplaced.”

For now, park employees, Monaco stated, are retaining an in depth eye on any exercise that might set off new fires. She inspired New Yorkers to do the identical.

“We’re encouraging New Yorkers to stay vigilant and to name 911 in the event that they see anybody smoking in a park or any barbecues,” she stated. “We want folks to essentially perceive the dire penalties of any hearth, any smoking, any open flames in any park inflicting a menace like this.”

Monaco declined to touch upon studies that vagrants residing within the wooded homeless encampment had been presumably accountable for the comb hearth.

Days later, nevertheless, park-goers had returned to Prospect Park. Runners, cyclists, and stroller-pushing dads populated Prospect Park’s roads and trails on Thursday. Some new sights and smells greeted them. Barbecues within the park had since been coated with plastic garbage baggage in adherence with town’s grill ban. A campfire odour nonetheless lingered.

Alongside a fence by the ridge the place the hearth burned, a lot of New Yorkers had hooked up whimsical notes in solidarity praising each the park and the firefighters who fought the blaze.

“Prospect Park we’ll struggle for higher local weather coverage so generations forward can know your magnificence!” learn one nameless be aware.

“Pricey park, who knew such peace and sweetness was at such danger. There’ll by no means be one other you.”

Fireplace ‘in your again yard’

For a lot of New Yorkers, who’re extra accustomed to weathering hurricanes this time of 12 months, the specter of wildfires was one thing novel.

“That is the final forest in Brooklyn and it’s being threatened by forest fires,” defined Catalanotto, the Brooklyn instructor, after exploring the Prospect Park burn website. “I didn’t anticipate that one. The local weather disaster is close by.”

Different Brooklynites echoed the sentiment.

“It was stunning and shocking,” Flatbush kitchen supervisor, Kat Teague, 43, additionally informed Al Jazeera. “I by no means thought there can be a forest hearth in Prospect Park – within the concrete jungle, proper? It’s tremendous loopy.”

The comb hearth, which unfolded in essentially the most populous borough in New York, the place roughly 2.7 million folks dwell, has left others feeling understandably “anxious” in regards to the insidious impact of local weather change.

“It’s unusual as a result of every time there’s been any form of smoke or warnings of fires earlier than, it’s at all times been fairly distant from New York or within the metropolises,” stated Noah, a 24-year-old scholar residing in Brooklyn. “It feels prefer it’s getting nearer, like local weather change is extra of an issue. It’s actually in your again yard.”

‘Mountains coated with hearth’

Alongside the border of New York and New Jersey, the massive Jennings Creek wildfire, which has been burning for days, has inflicted a extra sinister scar on the encircling communities and their habitat.

The blaze has left at the very least one lifeless and residents on edge, many retaining go-bags and residing underneath the specter of evacuation. Final Saturday, 18-year-old New York State Parks employee Dariel Velasquez misplaced his life “battling” the wildfire when a tree collapsed on him. No different deaths, severe accidents, or construction losses have been reported.

As of Thursday, the hearth was 75 % contained, in accordance with the New Jersey Forest Service. Blackhawk and Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters, that are dumping hundreds of litres of water on the smouldering territory, have slowed the hearth’s unfold.

At evening time in current days – when the solar sinks over Greenwood Lake – residents have been pressured to soak up essentially the most dramatic, even terrifying, views of the Jennings Creek wildfire and the true scale of its devastation. On the wildfire’s peak over the weekend, miles upon miles of brush and surrounding lake had been illuminated by dancing flames.

“It was so pink, the mountains coated with hearth,” Randal Rodriguez, 39, the proprietor of lakeside hotdog diner, Paul’s Place, informed Al Jazeera. “I used to be in shock – in my life I’ve by no means seen one thing like that.”

Rodriguez, who stated the wildfires had additionally burned up enterprise at his diner in current days, admitted that he has had hassle adjusting to the always smoky circumstances.

“There’s been lots of smoke for a number of days already,” Rodriguez stated. “It’s a bit laborious to breathe. You are feeling like you’ll be able to’t breathe. Actually robust smoke. If you happen to keep for a couple of minutes it is going to have an effect on you, your eyes, your nostril.”

Medical consultants warning that wildfire smoke, which comprises a number of pollution, together with particulate matter and carbon monoxide, can have a variety of each short- and long-term results on one’s well being and respiratory system, together with nostril and throat irritation, wheezing, coughing, and hassle respiration. It may additionally exacerbate pre-existing medical or respiratory circumstances reminiscent of bronchial asthma and COPD.

Greenwood Lake resident, Dave Kozuha, 44, who lives a number of kilometres from the wildfire, likened it to “Dante’s Inferno”.

“Greenwood Lake is nestled between mountains on both facet of the lake and the one entire ridge was simply ablaze, it was actually simply hearth leaping throughout the highest, the very size of the ridge was all lit,” Kozuha informed Al Jazeera. “It was unreal to see one thing like that.”

Kozuha, who operates a neighborhood espresso roastery, stated he knew a number of individuals who had voluntarily evacuated their properties. The lake’s surrounding communities, he stated, had been residing in fixed worry of evacuation or worse, potential displacement, if the hearth encroached on their properties.

“Proper now it’s simply plumes of smoke going up,” Kozuha added. “If the winds change, it may come this fashion. It’s a hazard, little question about that.”

Kozuha stated he has been making an attempt to stay calm and claimed he has not but misplaced any sleep over the days-long wildfire – there was no time anyway, he famous. The native Java purveyor’s firm, Greenwood Lake Roasters Craft Espresso, has been caffeinating the firefighters battling the blaze across the clock with free espresso.

“We’re doing every thing we will to comprise this menace to our neighborhood,” Kozuha stated. “[We’re] making an attempt to be robust however [we] really feel the ache of the lack of life and potential hurt. Fireplace is a robust highly effective drive – and now we have to face robust towards it. Collectively we’ll defeat it.”