An F16 fighter jet flare accidently lit my town on fire

An F16 fighter jet flare accidently lit my town on fire

blog.nj.com

A major forest fire that has consumed some 5,000 acres of the Pinelands in southern Ocean County and damaged several mobile homes may have been sparked by a flare, officials say.

Officials with the New Jersey National Guard say they are working under the assumption that a flare dropped by one of their fighter jets started the fire.

"We believe it was one of our F-16s on a routine training mission that dropped the flare that started the fire," said Lt. Col. James Garcia, a spokesman for the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. "There's going to be an investigation."

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is getting pretty bad. I live in Ocean County, NJ and a fire has consumed about 5,000 acres so far as of right now. A lot of my friends have been forced to evacuate, luckily I'm on Long Beach Island.

I doubt there's any conspiracy involved sounds like military clumsiness to me but who knows.



blog.nj.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Edit: So far 12,000 acres on fire

[edit on 15-5-2007 by comm12]

okay now propane tanks are blowing up and the fire is only 10% under control

Is this the same NG unit that almost strafed an elementary school a couple of years back?

The Air National Guard warplane, flying a night training mission out of Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, fired a burst of 27 rounds from its 20-millimeter cannon shortly before 10:15 p.m. as it streaked over Little Egg Harbor Township, 20 miles north of Atlantic City, New Jersey military officials said last night.

Col. Brian Webster, commander of the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard, said that the pilot, who was not identified, fired the cannon inadvertently

From: www.defensetech.org...

I remember when that jet fired those shots at that school, that's only 9 miles from me. It wasn't the same unit but I believe they were both Air National Guard. The one that dropped the flare was based out of Atlantic City.

The same range had been involved in 2004 when a National Guard jet accidentally strafed an elementary school with large-caliber rounds during a training exercise.

news.yahoo.com...;_ylt=Av8WtT_ENQMJH1bmSj10sA8E1vAI

Looks like this training place is in a very bad place. I would be scared if I was there.

Add another ATS member in the path of this Forest Fire. Last night I could see the huge plume of smoke due north of my street. You could see the glow of the fire behind the Nuclear Power Plant

Schools are closed, and the traffic is a mess around here. Just received more news that the Hospital, a adult community and housing development is also being evacuated as I write this.

The Air National Guard dropped a flair which caused this fire. I wonder what kind of relief our government will give to the people that lost homes such as free temporary housing? They did do this while it was a RED FLAG day and they clearly knew the forest fire danger was HIGH. They didn't follow the rules/laws. Now, if it was me or you that had a little BBQ out there and started that fire we would be fined big time.

Much damage in my area. My home smells like smoke so bad. The ash was everywhere which did get into homes (fine particles) ... what a mess!

I don’t know much about nuclear power plants,


but could this be bad if it gets on this plant?

Man you should see see the skies over here now it looks like armageddon. they 're evacuating everything now. it must have burnt down a cell phone tower too because no ones cell phone is working. I know they are expressing concern about the power plant, if that fire gets close to there we're in trouble. I just went to the bank and the roads are like parking lots.

I have no idea if fire would do much to the reactor. I do not know much about them other then the reactor is underground and might be within steel and concrete. I do know that it is the oldest operating commercial power plant in the United States, and that it just was approved for another 25 yrs. The east side of the plant has a horseshoe creek that is used to cool the reactor, but the fire is coming from its southwest. Not sure if there is any fire breaks there.

Just now we started another shower of ash in my area. If there was an evacuation due to the power plant and this fire I do not think it would work out very well. Half of our main routes out are being affected by the fire. The other good half would be so congested and move very slow.

To those closer to the fire path, from my family to yours ... good luck.

The rains are here, and I sure hope they put out this fire. It did pour for about ten minutes, then very light rain. I could see on radar when the storm came through the winds picked up and we had a Tornado vortex signature over our town (according to radar) and you could see the smoke plume on radar start to extend further off shore. I'm awaiting to hear the news to see if the rain hit hard in the right places.

All this because they used a flare on a day they knew they shouldn't have. HIGH fire danger, but they totally ignored it.

Good luck to all those in the path of this.. hope you and your loved ones and homes stay out of danger.

Yea its raining pretty heavily right now and i believe the rain is supposed to last steadily so thank god...this should put it out

whats the word after the rain yesterday? havent seen any news updates today yet. glad I didnt have any deliveries out that way these past few days.
how careless, thoughtless, etc. like above if that was you or I, who knows what they would do. If my home was affected I would not just be paid off and silenced about this.
Do they really need to use a fricken flare still, cant they use a miltary grade glowstick or somthing? todays soldier grew up on tv they can IMAGINE a flare, it doesnt have to be real. I think we need to learn we dont have to stay with every tradition on a whole broad range of things.

this stuff gets me started.

firehouse sirens...
dont they have cell phones and pagers?
why?
just put a stoplight there (they throw them in everywhere else)
and jam the signal or blow the horn. no need to blow a siren every other day.