East End blaze brings back memories of Sunrise Fire of 1995

Fires whipping across the East End on Saturday have drawn quick and worrisome memories of the Sunrise Fire of 1995 that scorched thousands of acres of nearby woods around Westhampton late that summer.

For more than a week from late August to early September of 1995, the wind-whipped Sunrise Fire burned some 5,000 acres of the pine barrens on both sides of Sunrise Highway at Westhampton. The blazes, with columns of fire reaching upward of 200 feet, forced hundreds from their homes, temporarily shut down roadways and the Long Island Rail Road and exposed weaknesses in firefighters’ plans to battle such blazes. The cause was never discovered but the blaze was preceded by weeks of drought.

“I lived through the ’95 fire and I know the conditions,” Suffolk County Supervisor Ed Romaine, a Center Moriches resident, said from the scene of Saturday’s fire. Romaine said this weekend’s fire had the potential to be worse, given strong winds and the large amount of dead trees decimated by the southern pine beetle. Countless acres devastated by the beetle have been visible from Sunrise Highway and along Route 51 heading north for more than a year.

The Sunrise Fire was first spotted as three columns of smoke burning in woods near the Suffolk County Community College Campus in Riverhead on Aug. 24. Fanned by summer winds, the fire quickly made its way to Sunrise Highway and crossed into the southern pine barrens.

Some 400 residents were forced to evacuate and 25 firefighters were injured, none fatally. One neighbor who was forced to evacuate was Bill Rash. “We’ve always heard about national disasters somewhere else,” he told Newsday at the time. “Now we’re in one.”

Some 2,000 firefighters battled the blaze, Newsday reported, including every fire department on Long Island, some from New York City, and from 10 states and federal agencies.

The 1995 fire exposed problems with coordination and logistics in fighting such big fires, including where to locate firefighting gear and coordinate radio communications. Firefighting agencies had been largely trained in fighting structural fires, not big fires deep in wooded areas, officials said at the time.

In the intervening years, fire departments’ purchased new gear, cut fire roads through wooded areas, practiced new skills and did prescribed burns to help eliminate the prospect of new fires.

In addition, the Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission began listing the Fire Danger Rating at the top of its website. (On Saturday, the rating was listed as “HIGH,” which is considered to be in the middle of the range between extreme and low). The commission also established an academy in 1997 for firefighters across the region to learn to battle outdoor blazes in woods.

The Sunrise Fire wasn’t the only one to engulf the region. In 2012, two brushfires in Manorville and Ridge eventually converged before scorching more than 1,100 acres of pine barrens. The April 9 blaze probably was the result of drought conditions leading up the fires, spread by high winds. Then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared Suffolk County a disaster area. “It looked like a war zone,” one firefighter told Newsday at the time.

On Saturday, Gov. Kathy Hochul took the same step, declaring a state of emergency as more than 70 separate fire departments battled the blaze along Sunrise Highway.

With Rachel Uda and Craig Schneider

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.