| On Saturday April 19th, at 12:30 AM, South Salem Firefighters recieved a page asking Westchester County Fire Departments to send members to help Ulster County fight a large forest fire. At the time of the request, the fire, located at Minnewaska State Park, had consumed over 1300 acres. Westchester Firefighters were to assemble at Montrose Fire Department at 6:45am.
Firefighters Bob Veit, Hank Algire and Mike Harris responded from South Salem.
Firefighters from Continental Village, Buchanan, Montrose, Montrose VA, Croton, Chappaqua, Vista and Batt. 10 assembled and boarded a bus. By the time the mutual aid arrived, the fire had burned 2,300 acres. Firefighters Veit, Algire and Harris were sent up to the top of the mountain with the 25+ other firefighters from Westchester.
Under the command of NY State Wild Land Firefighters, they were told to create fire barriers to prevent the fire from jumping to a different area of the forest. Helicopters, including a Blackhawk, used "bambi" buckets to dump water on the fire. While clearing fire lines, the 50 to 100 foot flames jumped and moved closer to the firefighters. As a precaution, they were moved back to a safety zone and told to protect a cabin by clearing bush around it. Later that afternoon when workers were allowed to return to their original fire line, firefighters saw the fire had burned everything up to the fire barrier, proving that the barrier served its purpose.
The three firefighters from South Salem returned to the fire house by 9 PM that evening. We would like to thank firefighters Veit, Harris and Algire for giving their time to help their brothers upstate.
As of 4/22/08, the fire is almost under control, after burning more than 3,000 acres of forest. |
