PACKET EDITORIAL, May 22
Under normal circumstances, a forest fire in the Pine Barrens would arouse little interest or concern in the rest of New Jersey.
After all, those 1.1 million acres of scrubby pinelands the largest piece of open space between Boston and Richmond are purposely off the beaten track. There are no major attractions (indeed, that is part of the Pine Barrens’ charm); few motorists are aware, as they head down the Garden State Parkway or one of the narrower roadways leading to the glittering casinos of Atlantic City, that they’re traveling through a National Preserve, the nation’s first, and a United Nations-designated International Biosphere Reserve.
Besides, fires break out all the time in the Pine Barrens. And most of them are naturally occurring a product of spontaneous combustion that is nature’s way of regenerating itself. Because the area is protected from development under both state and federal law, it remains sparsely populated; and because it is so sparsely populated, the fires that scorch it with such regularity rarely imperil homes or the people who live in them.
But last week’s forest fire that swept through 17,000 acres in the southeastern corner of the Pine Barrens was a notable exception. For one thing, it came dangerously close to an established residential area, causing 6,000 people to be evacuated from their homes. For another, the combustion that sparked this fire was anything but spontaneous; it was started by a flare dropped from an F-16 jet on a training maneuver from a nearby New Jersey Air National Guard range.
If this were an isolated incident, even the affected residents might excuse the mistake. Many of them are retired from the military, and the Air National Guard range is used to train pilots bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. This wasn’t the first time, however, that maneuvers above the range have gone awry.
In 1999, a Pennsylvania National Guard A-10 dropped a dummy bomb a mile off target, sparking a fire that burned 12,000 acres and lasted four days. Two years later, another errant bomb from an F-16 scorched 1,600 acres. In 2002, an F-16 crashed near the Garden State Parkway the third such crash near the range in 10 years. And in 2004, an F-16 pilot applying too much pressure on the trigger fired 25 artillery rounds into an elementary school.
"I can assure you that our No. 1 priority is the safe operation of this range," said Maj. Gen. Glenn K. Reith, the state’s adjutant general and head of the National Guard in New Jersey. This assurance rang hollow to U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, and failed to mollify state Sen. Leonard Connors and Assemblymen Christopher Connors and Brian Rumpf, who represent the district in which the range is located.
Ironically, Sen. Lautenberg, a Democrat, merely criticized the National Guard for failing to follow proper safety procedures, while the three legislators, all Republicans, went a step further, calling for the range to be closed.
Whether this latest incident calls for so drastic a measure remains to be seen. Operations at the range have been suspended while the Air Force investigates, and it’s a safe bet that both state and federal legislative hearings, if not full-fledged investigations, will soon follow. It is already very clear, however, that threats to the fragile ecosystem of the Pine Barrens come from every direction even above and that even more vigorous measures must be taken to preserve and protect it, not just for those who live in the immediate vicinity but for all of the state’s residents and future generations.