A volunteer firefighter was arrested on Long Island on Tuesday after the Suffolk County police said he intentionally set a fire in a wooded area, at a time when New York State is seeing a jump in brush fires and wildfires amid dangerously dry conditions.
The man, Jonathan E. Quiles, 20, said in a written statement that he had lit cotton balls on fire and kicked them under a Chevrolet sedan in Medford, N.Y., according to court documents. The car and the debris around it were set ablaze, in one of several brush fires reported in the area on Tuesday.
Mr. Quiles, a volunteer with the Medford Fire Department, was charged with second-degree reckless endangerment and fourth-degree and fifth-degree arson. He pleaded not guilty in a Central Islip courtroom on Wednesday.
He was placed on supervised release with GPS monitoring, according to the Suffolk County district attorney’s office. He is due back in court on Monday.
Mr. Quiles has also been suspended from his position with the Medford Fire District, according to a letter posted on the department’s Facebook page, which said that he would be fired if convicted.
In the letter, Craig G. Cowell, chairman of the fire district, said firefighters were put through arson background checks, and that the department had not had reason to believe that Mr. Quiles “had any inclination of intentionally setting fires.”
Mr. Quiles did not immediately respond to a request for comment. His lawyer, Anthony M. LaPinta, described his client as a “polite young man who has, in the past, successfully worked through a number of personal challenges.”
The police department’s investigation into the fire is continuing. Mr. Quiles’s arrest follows an exhausting week for firefighters across the New York metropolitan area.
In New York City, the Fire Department said Wednesday that it had responded to 229 brush fires in the last two weeks, the highest number over a two-week period in city history. A majority were in the Bronx and Queens, according to the department.
City residents faced the realities of worsening climate change over the weekend as fires broke out in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and Highbridge Park in the Bronx, causing a thick smoky smell to engulf much of the city.
On Tuesday, another brush fire in the Bronx led to a power outage that forced Amtrak to halt train service between New York and New Haven, Conn.
But the most intense blaze in the area has been the Jennings Creek fire, a wildfire that has been burning along the New York-New Jersey border since Friday and has grown to 5,000 acres.
Gusty winds and craggy terrain have made the fire difficult to contain, with hundreds of firefighters and volunteers battling the flames. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said during a news conference on Tuesday that the Jennings Creek fire was her “greatest concern.”
Dry conditions and little rainfall in the Northeast have put New Yorkers on high alert, prompting a statewide ban on outdoor burning and renewing calls for water conservation.
“We need the public to remain vigilant,” said Robert S. Tucker, New York City’s fire commissioner. “Due to a significant lack of rainfall, the threat of fast-spreading brush fires fueled by dry vegetation and windy conditions pose a real threat to our members and our city.”
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