Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 4

I i i i Newaday BUI Dtvii DUST BOWL A boot raises fine powdery silt showing how dry the soil is on the Schmitt farm 2000 acres burn homes near blaze are evacuated i By Olivia Winslow STAFF WRITER i A suspicious fire fueled by swirling winds and dry timber swallowed up an estimated 2000 acres of state land in Rocky Point leading to mandatory evacuations and road closings yesterday when the blaze threatened homes such a tremendous said Republican Suffolk Legis Herb Davis a former Yaphank fire chief who was driving one of the trucks that went into the heart of the fire here there all over the place hard to put Davis who said he has fought fires for 50 years ranks the Rocky Point fire as one of the toughest ever seen a scale of 1 to 10 up About 6 pm Suffolk County Executive Robert Gaffney who had surveyed the scene: declared a state of emergency giving police authority to make residents leave their homes because of the blaze that firefighters had battled since Monday Voluntary evacuations had occurred in some areas earlier in the day About 8:30 pm Gaffney said the fire was contained but not yet brought under control Gaffney said that as the fire moves past some areas people will be allowed to return to their homes But he noted the unpredictable nature of the fire now we kind of caught a break It crossed over Whiskey Road and came down just east of Coventry Manor a residential complex between Wading River Hollow Road and Currans Road It just narrowly missed that but destroyed transmission tower and some of its Channel 55 was forced off the air Gaffney said fire outbreaks were occurring in other areas fire is still under investigation but we do believe that not natural said Capt Robert Conklin a state forest ranger someone was carelessly smoking or somebody deliberately set had a fire of this magnitude since said David Fischler commissioner for fire rescue and emergency services That year he said a brushfire ate up about 2000 acres in Manorville Ridge and Wading River The fire was raging in the Rocky Point National Resource Management Area owned and operated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and other nearby property About 600 to 900 firefighters from some 96 volunteer fire companies from throughout Suffolk battled the flames that seemed to stay one step ahead driven by up to 20 mph winds is no cooperation from the said Eddie Bie assistant chief for the Rocky Point Fire Department and one of three chiefs who shared command duties wind gusting is killing us It gets in the trees and the whirlwinds take the fire off in all Throughout the day the fire kept getting clos- Please see FIRE on Page A27 Lament Across LI: How Dry We Are stand of pachysandra under some trees Smith said she has been watering her lawn about every third day have a gardener We do all this ourselves So if you put in the work you have to do According to officials at the Northeast Regional Climate Center in upstate Ithaca Long Island has been in a drought since February with below-average rainfall during most of that period In June the situation reached the level the most serious classification on a drought scale known as the Palmer index drought is so bad you would need more than 10 inches of rain just to get out of said Jeffrey Schultz a climatologist at the Climate Center He said that rainfall has been down through most iff the Northeast a situation he said is the result of climate So far this month less than a half inch of rain has fallen at Brookhaven National Laboratory Normal rainfall for the first three weeks of the month is 317 inches Rainfall has also been scant at other Long Island locations jet stream is over Canada and not allowing any disturbances to move this far south with any said Jim Hayes a National Weather Service meteorologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory have fronts move through but not enough moisture ahead for the front to develop any showers or thunderstorms as you would expect in the Hayes said And there any significant rain in the forecast at least through Sunday as far as the Please see DRY on Page A27 ByPhilMintz STAFF WRITER Ferdie Schmitt scuffed his work boot along a roadway at his Melville farm yesterday sending up a fine powdery cloud of dust on a hot dry day that have been out of place in southern California say when dry like this the ground is like said Schmitt as a 1000-foot-long irrigation line on wheels pumped 250 gallons of water a minute onto rows of Boston romaine and red leaf lettuce so dry Schmitt said I move the pipe the bees are looking for With Long Island in what climatologists say is an drought" irrigation be it the expensive and extensive rigs used by farmers or the simple oscillators set out on lawns by homeowners is turning out to be the saving grace of the summer of 1995 This month in particular is turning out to be one of the driest Augusts on record and the dry weather is helping fuel the brush fires that were burning yesterday in the Pine Barrens Preserve Suffolk The dry weather also has taken its toll on plants and shrubs For those without automatic watering systems moving the sprinkler from one spot to another has become an almost-daily chore in some cases hampered by watering restrictions been hot been said Dorothy Smith as she positioned a yellow plastic sprinkler on the heal thy-loo king green lawn in front of her Dix Hills home Another sprinkler ainarid to a black hose was already watering a nearby -V' iifiiiirf-imi I S3 1.