Livingston, California And Wildfires: Chief Recalls Recent Blaze

LIVINGSTON, NJ — The following op-ed comes courtesy of Livingston Fire Chief Christopher Mullin. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.

The destruction on the California coast has me reflecting on the industrial wildfire we faced in Livingston Township on October 26, 2024. While our incident was thankfully small in comparison, I am reminded of the lasting impact it had on our community. I want to clarify that I am not comparing our experience to the devastation in Los Angeles. Rather, I am expressing gratitude that our wildfire did not escalate into the destructive force that Californians are tragically experiencing. Though we did battle a steady wind on the day of our wildfire, things would have been dramatically different if we had experienced the 60-80 mph Santa Anna winds that are often seen in California.

We are fortunate in Livingston to have plenty of water at our disposal when it comes to firefighting efforts. In consultation with our Township Utility Engineer Nathan Kiracofe, he provided the following information regarding our township water system and improvements. “We have 1,338 fire hydrants and per the stipulations of the Water Quality Accountability Act rules introduced by the New Jersey State Legislature in 2017 we are required to service the hydrants annually and for the past three years we have achieved 100% of hydrants serviced”. Kiracofe added that “This number does not include the private hydrants, which are maintained by the property owners. I would estimate there are an additional 100 private hydrants in the system. Almost all of the major redevelopment projects of the past 10 years or so have included at least one new hydrant near the property due to a mixture of requests from the Fire Department, Engineering Department and Water Department”.

The County of Essex has a Fire Mutual Aid system that is vibrant when it comes to requests for mutual aid. The Incident commander (of any Department) calls Essex County Fire Mutual Aid on the radio and advises dispatch what type of situation (Structure Fire, Hazardous-Mat Incident, Collapse, Etc.) and mutual aid is dispatched to the requesting municipality based on pre-determined resources allocation and availability. Should an incident escalate beyond the capability of the Essex County Mutual Aid System, additional resources would be dispatched from neighboring counties through County Mutual Aid based out of the East Orange Fire Department Dispatch. Additional specialized resources if not available locally, would come from the State of New Jersey resource pool, or even the FDNY – Fire Department of New York if needed.

On the day of our wildfire in October of 2024, we were fortunate to have a full response locally from our township volunteer firefighters as well as a full response from our mutual aid partners throughout the County of Essex as well as the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. We were fortunate to be able to provide structural protection to our shopping centers and commercial buildings in the line of fire, without any structural damage or injuries. Again, conditions were dramatically different between the two incidents, but we were fortunate to have burned 192 acres in town compared to the tens of thousands of acres that continue to burn in California. We continue to pray for all the residents that were negatively affected by these wildfires on California, and hope that enough resources become available for finally get these fires under control so the residents of these affected areas can finally get back to some since of normalcy. Please keep them in your Prayers!

Send local news tips and correction requests to eric.kiefer@patch.com. Learn more about advertising on Patch here.