A fire that burned a scar the size of a football field into the woods on the north side of the railroad tracks on Napeague on July 16, temporarily closing the road and halting train service, could have been much worse, Chris Beckert, the chief of the Amagansett Fire Department, said this week.
“If it was a little bit windier and less humid it would have been a different story. It was close to us losing it and going past the reach of our hoses. It could have easily turned into a much bigger fire.”
The fire was reported between 3 and 4 p.m. The road was reopened by 6:19 p.m.
Even the discovery of the fire was a bit lucky.
“No one called 911 on it,” said Mr. Beckert. “Someone called the Fire Department, and I happened to be in the building. Another driver told a police officer” — Ian Gerken, who was on patrol — “and it turned out a town fire marshal saw it while he was driving by.”
The fire showed Chief Beckert and the two other fire departments that responded, Montauk and East Hampton, what sort of challenges they would face if there is a larger blaze in the area, viewed as a giant tinderbox since the southern pine beetle has killed scores of trees.
“We had to lay 1,600 feet of hose to a hydrant to get a water supply,” he said. That’s a lot. In Beach Hampton, for example, he said hydrants are at most 300 feet from a house.
“We had to climb over and through downed trees and drag hoses through them, which was a real hindrance,” he said. It was also close to 90 degrees on July 16 and very humid. “We had to do our best to fight it from the road by dragging hoses over the railroad tracks.” The felled trees made it impossible for Mr. Beckert to deploy the department’s new brush truck. “The first thing I did was to call and shut down the railroad. We didn’t cross the railroad until we had clarification that it had been shut down.”
A key lesson, he said, was that trees felled to combat the beetle infestation burn as readily as standing dead trees. Further, they create serious barriers to access potential fires.
He made his thoughts clear in a post-fire letter to East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and the town board.
“The town board should take steps to correct the public record and retract the false narrative that our woods are somehow safer because these trees have been felled and left in place,” he wrote. “Our firsthand experience shows that these areas are more dangerous now than they were before. A coordinated, funded plan is needed to remove or properly process this hazardous material before we face an even more serious incident.”
In March, John Wernet, a regional forester with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, told the town board that, “Large dead standing trees, slash on the ground don’t drive the fire. In fact, when the fire hits that, it stops.”
“The downed trees burn just like a dead Christmas tree. We saw it,” Mr. Beckert said this week, contradicting Mr. Wernet.
In an emailed response, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez thanked Chief Beckert and his department and explained the town’s position.
“We want to clarify that the properties referenced in your letter, including the areas along Montauk Highway, are owned and managed by New York State, not the Town of East Hampton. While the town does not have jurisdiction over these lands, we share your concern and fully support efforts to improve safety in the area. We have long urged the state to manage its properties on Napeague in a way that reduces fire risk and improves access for emergency responders.”
A June 23 letter to Ms. Burke-Gonzalez from George Gorman, the regional director of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said the Roxy Group had been hired “to create slash piles along the Paumanok Path” and that Startree Wildfire Protection was working to write both a Fire Management Plan and targeted burn plans. A three-year tree cutting and piling contract is out for bid.
Mr. Gorman hoped new cutting could begin by Nov. 1.
During the winter of 2024-25, approximately 2,780 trees along trails on Napeague were felled. By the end of June, 300 slash piles had been created. They will be burned in the future under the supervision of a burn boss.
The Police Department deployed a drone equipped with thermal imaging technology to help fire crews detect and extinguish remaining hotspots last week. Regional officials deployed a 24-hour fire watch starting the night of July 16. While that was originally reported to continue until July 30, Mr. Gorman couldn’t be reached Tuesday to confirm that detail.
It is still unclear what caused the blaze.
“We don’t have any idea how it started,” said Dutch Riege, an East Hampton Town fire marshal, on Monday. “It’s M.T.A. and state property, so we don’t have jurisdiction to do an investigation there.”
However, a Monday morning email to Lucas Bejarano, a media relations analyst for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, inquiring about the status of the investigation, was returned with a request to direct such questions to the “local fire department.”
Local firefighters have said that in dry conditions a spark thrown from a passing train would be enough to start a fire. According to the L.I.R.R. Montauk train schedule, an eastbound train would have passed the area around 2:10 p.m., and again around 4 p.m. that day. A westbound train left Montauk at 2:45 p.m.
“I want to extend my deepest gratitude to the Amagansett, Montauk, and East Hampton Fire Departments, the East Hampton Town Police Department, our town fire marshals, and all the emergency personnel who acted swiftly to contain this fire,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said in a statement issued after it was extinguished last week. “I especially want to recognize Police Officer Gerken, who was the first to report the fire while on patrol. This was a coordinated and professional response that protected both people and property. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who answered the call.”
Gerald Turza, the fire and emergency medical services administrator for East Hampton Village, was already making changes this week based on lessons learned from the fire.
In an email to Marcos Baladron, the village administrator, he said the village fire department would invest in more “forestry kits,” “chain saws for trucks that do not have them,” and a “compressed air foam system.” He said he also wanted to purchase a “floating pump that can be used in a backyard swimming pool” when hydrants are too far away.
“This was our first encounter with access issues like that,” Mr. Turza said in a phone call. “We’re adapting. We’re adding equipment. The fire reinforced a lot of assumptions we had made and we’re making efforts to improve our tactics and our equipment cache to better meet the challenge.”
“Amagansett made a great stop on what could have been a nightmare fire,” said Peter Joyce, the chief of the Montauk Fire Department.
“We believe it would be valuable to jointly advocate for an accelerated timeline for the state’s planned work,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez wrote to Mr. Beckert. “With heightened fire risk and limited access in some areas, moving quickly to implement mitigation measures and complete slash pile removal is essential.”
“There are clearly different views on the role of downed trees,” she wrote, “but the priority now is improving conditions before another fire happens. That’s going to take coordination, urgency, and follow-through from the state.”
With Reporting by Christopher Walsh