Posted on 04/24/2025 7:18:48 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
A 19-year-old man has been charged with arson for allegedly sparking the massive wildfire in the New Jersey Pine Barrens that has torched 15,000 acres, prosecutors said.
Joseph Kling, of Ocean Township, allegedly started a bonfire in the vast Forked River Mountains Wilderness Area with wooden pallets that exploded out of control when he did not properly put it out, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.
Kling was taken into custody at Ocean Township police headquarters and taken to the Ocean County Jail, where he is awaiting his detention hearing.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Left the coals glowing with the wind kicking up and they re-ignited, probably.
Lightning starts most fires, it’s natural and random. Criminals start fewer but more dangerous fires because they start them near cities and towns. They don’t go deep into the wilds to start them.
Starting a bonfire with wooden pallets may not be a good idea unless you are out in the desert at Burning Man. Doing that near a pine forest may not be a good idea.
During a drought. Idiot. Very smokey at the shore.
This sort of thing actually happens. I was burning a pile of pallets one day. I decided to put it out and approached the fire with a fire extinguisher. The pallets saw me coming and exploded like there was an IED under them. Parts of pallets flew in all directions carrying fire with them into the woods hundreds of yards. I was lucky to escape with my life. /s/
Why is it many stories by journalists are so poorly written these days? Or did some Affirmative Action DA with the country write this?
What I see as possible is the kid had a fire and never properly extinguished it. Maybe it was not properly contained in a fire ring of rocks. Maybe the wind picked up and things got out of control. For sure the pallets never exploded after he tried to put out the fire.
I see the kid is a white boy. If he were an illegal of color he never would have been charged with anything.
Pallets are perfectly constructed to burn, bigly.
A pile of them ought to start a forest fire easily.
Absolutely pitiful writing, isn’t it? Everybody on FR can write better than these idiot “journalists.”
We had a burn pile from a “controlled” burn that smoldered over winter and reignited in the spring, joined up with another Forest Service ignited fire and eventually burned 350,000 acres.
Aren't they? Perfectly spaced highly combustible, dried wood.
Remember the I-10 Freeway fire in Los Angeles in November 2023? Pallets were stored under the freeway overpass! What an incredibly stupid thing to do. The fire was almost impossible to get under control. It got so intense an LAFD fire truck burned up and the freeway was closed eight days for repairs. It re-opened WEEKS ahead of the original repair schedule!
Ashes are an excellent insulator..................
Perhaps the kid didn’t know he was literally playing with fire and it got away from him.
I was 19 once, and an idiot, but I never did something THAT stupid.
I thought his name was Clinmate Change?
“Lightning starts most fires”
Possibly but a large percentage are caused by arsonists. Would guess at least 50%.
“Would guess at least 50%.”
I used to serve on a fire board in the mountains of Colorado. Near cities arson is more prevalent. Out in the sticks (where most fires happen) it’s lightning, then campfire stupidity, and then the rare arson. Arson is mostly a population density thing. Here’s the net’s answer:
21 percent
Rice reports that debris burning starts the most human-caused fires, at 29 percent, with arson the cause of 21 percent of fires. Equipment use causes 11 percent of fires, while campfires and children playing with fireworks or matches each cause 5 percent of fires.
Yet homeless in California who set fires...
“Up in flames: Rising number of homeless fires threatens LA neighborhoods”
“There were 13,909 homeless fires in Los Angeles in 2023, almost double the number of such fires in 2020, according to LAFD data.
Some of these fires are apparently caused by homeless people tapping into city electrical wires under the sidewalk, the I-Team found.
The firemen also said fires are being started from openly cooking meth.”
The pols blame it all on Climate change, of course - as the homeless population continues to grow and spread.
There are thousands of acres in the Pine Barrens where groups or inidividuals can “party” without anyone knowing they are there. The area is in a state of forced abandonment by state regulations that bar any development of any kind in large tracts of the area, on the theory they are “saving” a vast water supply with the huge qcquifer that lies beneath the area.
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