Fire In Walking Dunes Forced Firefighters To Battle Flames On Foot, Guided From Above

A brush fire near the Walking Dunes area of Napeague scorched more than 20 acres of dunelands over the weekend as volunteer firefighters from the region fought to keep it from spreading to nearby Hither Hills State Park, struggling with difficult terrain that hampered access to the fire with heavy equipment.

The blaze was ultimately brought under control in the dark on Friday, July 22, by firefighters on foot, toting backpacks filled with bay water, and guided by an East Hampton Town Police remote-controlled drone that directed them to pockets of fire creeping through the dunes.

Nearly 100 volunteer firefighters from six local fire departments responded to the fire on Friday evening in an area at the foot of Hither Hills that has no access roads and is crossed with marshy wetlands and littered with driftwood.

Two of the specially designed “brush trucks” that local fire departments have for blazing trails through thick underbrush, got bogged down in wetlands, and other vehicles could only get to within about a half mile of the burning area on roads. The rising tide blocked off what would typically be the best way to reach the area, driving along the shoreline of Napeague Harbor.

With few other options, firefighters were ferried as close the fire as possible on ATVs and in their personal vehicles, and then forged into the dunes on foot, carrying “Indian Can” backpacks of water to snuff out flames one tiny section at a time.

“It was a very difficult situation,” Amagansett Fire Department 1st Assistant Chief Michael Steele said. “The terrain, the dunes and the high tide on the harbor side made it very difficult to get at.”

The backpacks hold just 4 or 5 gallons of water at a time, so firefighters would soak small sections of flames, then have to trudge over the dunes to the bay to refill their packs and back in again.

Friday’s hot weather made the chore arduous and dangerous, and Montauk Fire Chief Scott Snow said the departments had to put in a significant effort to bring in drinks for firefighters and had EMTs on scene monitoring their condition.

Steele said that the fire was burning mostly dried beachgrass and old logs of trees that had washed ashore in storms over the years. The fire crept through the woods and even fire chiefs in a Suffolk County Police Department Helicopter had a difficult time directing firefighters to where fire could be seen burning from the air.

The police drone proved to be the best way to direct firefighters to where they were needed.

“The PD gets a lot of credit — the drone was definitely the best tool we had that night,” Steele said. “It would have been very hard to get under control without them guiding us to hot spots and helping us shuffle manpower to where the fire was going.”

The drone pilots, Sergeant Ryan Fink and Officer Pat Royal, were able to hover over places where the fire was advancing through the dunes and use the drone’s spotlight as a beacon for the firefighters.

The drone program is a new one to the East Hampton force. Five department officers, led by Lieutenant Chelsea Tierney, have been trained and certified to fly the drones — unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, as they are officially called — which the town purchased in 2021. The team began training in June on how to employ the drones to aid in search and rescue operations, tracking fleeing criminal suspects, disaster management, beach safety and mass gathering observation — even traffic control.

While the area that Friday’s fire broke out in is uninhabited, the fire posed a grave threat with the dry conditions that could have sparked a larger conflagration in the Hither Hills woods, the chiefs said. A wildfire in 1986 burned hundreds of acres of woodlands in Hither Hills State Park, the burned out remnants of which are still visible today in some areas.

The fire has rekindled several times in the ensuing days, including most recently on Monday morning — a product, firefighters said, of driftwood logs and the sandy soil allowing small bits of fire to smolder undetected for extended periods before bursting forth again.

Snow said that State Parks Department staffers have been carefully monitoring the burned out area, which covers about 25 acres, for signs of new fire and have called the fire departments back at least four times since Saturday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, the firefighters received permission from the state to use a bulldozer to clear a track into the area so that brush trucks could get in and saturate the ground with water, hopefully snuffing out any embers still smoldering under sand.

The cause of the fire is unknown, and investigators from the East Hampton Town fire marshal’s office said that because of the disturbance to the area by the effort to contain the fire, determining a source would not be be likely.

“It’s such a big parcel and there’s been so much traffic through there now, there’s just no way to determine what exactly started it,” Assistant Fire Marshal Tom Baker said. “The firefighters I spoke to said there weren’t any obvious signs of something that started it. It could have been somebody smoking — police said there were a few people in the area — but it could be as simple as a glass bottle laying in the dunes, acting like a magnifying glass.”