The quick work of 300 volunteers from 43 departments stamped out raging brushfires in western Suffolk and left them with tales to tell
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
By COLLIN NASH
Newsday (New York)
Craig Caviness clung white-knuckled to the roll cage in back of the stump jumper, he and three comrades, Bob Commisso, Tony de Cesare and Fred Weeks, ready to do battle.
They brought up the rear of a convoy of trucks heading into the thick of the fire, but got separated from the others by a wall of thick black smoke and wound up where flames licked above the 30-foot pines. A swift gust swept a curtain of flames toward the truck, first the passenger side, then the driver’s side.
“Somebody yelled, ‘Get down,’ so we got down and stayed down until we drove through it, maybe about 20 seconds,” Caviness, a Dix Hills firefighter, recalled. “It was extremely loud, like an earthquake.”
It paled in comparison to the wildfires that consumed thousands of acres in eastern Suffolk in late August 1995, but Thursday’s wildfires in western Suffolk nonetheless left Caviness and many of the 300 volunteers from 43 fire departments who fought it with heroic tales to tell.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said their efforts kept the blaze from spreading into residential areas.
“This could have led to a great deal of injury and far more property damage, but the quick work of our local fire departments kept it in check,” Levy said.
One of the volunteers, Kevin McAteer, a 15-year veteran of the Central Islip Fire Department, was enjoying some down time when his scanner crackled in the early afternoon summoning all hands to the firehouse.
As he drove the brush truck down Suffolk Avenue, there were threatening signs of the fires ahead. “All we could see was a huge black column of smoke,” said McAteer, a dispatcher part time at Central Islip and full time at the Smithtown Fire Department.
Once in the woods, however, the smoke, now more of a cloudy haze, made it difficult to see anything. As he navigated the wooded terrain - an area frequented by dirt bikers and all-terrain vehicle riders - the truck sunk to its axles in the sand, McAteer said. “We just roped the truck to a tree ahead and used a winch to pull it out while the crew doused the nearby burning brush.”
On one of the trips they made into the woods after refilling the truck’s 1,000-gallon tank, they were trying to attack the flames from the flank near Executive Drive, but the fire, swept by gusts, had other ideas.
“The winds were blowing the flames toward us. I was feeling a little nervous with the fire coming at us, but we had a good crew and I knew they would take care of business,” McAteer said.
Lt. Tom Napolitano, of the Dix Hills Fire Department, was all business after receiving a call around 1:30 p.m. saying more units were needed for the quickly expanding blaze.
He donned full bunker gear - 50 pounds of overalls, jacket, gloves, boots and helmet - over street clothes. Napolitano, who has fought fires for eight of his 25 years, said he wasn’t so much “nervous as he was anxious” to get to it.
And get to it he did.
When he arrived at the scene, more than 10 pump trucks all had their hoses trained on a large head of fire coming toward Long Island Avenue, he recalled. “A lot of us have never seen that much fire. It was coming right toward us.”
After dousing the main body of fire, Napolitano joined units from other departments and took to the wooded trails in a brush truck.
Before it was all over, his crew made some 10 passes, refilling the trucks’ emptied tanks and charging back into the woods, cutting down trees along the way and dousing spot fires beneath the underbrush.
Six backbreaking hours later, Napolitano’s spent body reminded him of the grueling nature of his business. “We were sore, totally exhausted and covered in soot and dirt, but all the training paid off.”
WHAT THE FIRE INVOLVED
7.5 hours firefighters spent on scene
9 ambulance companies
43 fire departments from Nassau and Suffolk
75 fire trucks
300 firefighters
PUMPER TRUCK
A gigantic water pump on wheels. Truck can deliver water from hydrants or its internal tank, which holds 500-1,500 gallons. Suffolk’s vehicles deliver an average of 1,000-1,500 gallons a minute.
STUMP JUMPER
A vehicle built for off-road firefighting, especially in wooded, brush-covered areas. Typically equipped with six-wheel drive, protective “brush cages” and 500 gallons of water.