While vast swaths of Long Island’s fire-prone pine barrens are west of the East End, communities throughout western Southampton Town learned quickly in March of 2025 that they could easily be right in the path of an out-of-control wildfire.

High winds and dry fuel conditions led to therapid spread of a wildfirethat reportedly started when a family in Manorville tried to make s’mores in their backyard on the morning of March 8, 2025, burning more than 600 acres before it was halted by a coordinated effort between 90 volunteer fire and ambulance companies and helicopter water drops by the U.S. Army and Air National Guard.

Since then, the Central Pine Barrens Commission has received a grant to prepare a Community Wildfire Protection Plan for a swath of the pine barrens from Eastport to Squiretown Road in Hampton Bays, as far north as Riverside and Flanders and bounded on the south by Montauk Highway, known as the “Southampton Pine Barrens Community Wildfire Protection Plan.”

The Southampton plan is being prepared by SWCA Environmental Consultants, which organized the first of three public informational meetings at the Flanders Community Center May 5.

Community Wildfire Protection Plans were first developed as part of the federal Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 as a way for communities to identify how they are at risk for wildfires and prioritize areas where they can reduce fuel and the ignitability of buildings.

“Community Wildfire Protection Plans encourage agencies to work together, promote healthy ecosystems and forest restoration and make communities eligible for funding,” said SWCA Project Manager Arianna Porter at the forum.

Porter gave an overview of how residents can keep their homes safe from fire and provided a timeline for the consultants’ work before attendees met to discuss their concerns in breakout sessions with local emergency response professionals and volunteer fire department personnel.

“There’s a lot here at risk,” she said, pointing out that the most damaging wildfires occur near areas where many people live, an area known in the wildland fire world as the wildland urban interface.

Porter said SWCA will develop its mitigation recommendations this summer and is expecting to have a draft of the plan available for public feedback in September 2027; it is expected to be finalized in October 2027.

Judy Jakobsen prepared theCentral Pine Barrens Commission’s first Community Wildfire Protection Planfor the communities of Ridge, Manorville and Calverton after numerous wildfires in that area in 2012.

Source: RiverheadLOCAL