Chuck Hamilton, the founder of the New York Wildfire Incident Management Academy, has handled logistics for his share of disasters over the years: the B.P. oil spill in 2010, the Columbia space shuttle recovery operation in 2003, nine hurricanes in three states and Puerto Rico, and active wildfire in likely every state west of the Mississippi River, to name a few.
As wildfire burns through Southern California, Anthony Giaccone posed a question in a letter to the editor last week: Could the East End be the next Los Angeles? It turns out, yes, it could.
“What’s happening in California is something that can happen every day here in New York,” said Mr. Hamilton, who was the first Type 1 nationally certified logistics chief from New York. “We were up in Greenwood Lake. Everybody thought they were living in a bucolic, forested area in upstate New York. Little did they know that we’d have this extreme dry period.”
The East End has what he called an “urban interface” — also present in Southern California — which means that houses touch right up against forested areas ripe with fuel: “We have that. We have that in Noyac. We have that on Napeague, to a certain degree. We definitely have it in Northwest Woods. We have it in Hampton Bays.”
“You have the fuel from the shrubs and plants and the grasses, and then when that gets hot, that hits a house, and a house is a heavy fuel, very concentrated fuel,” he said of the California fires, which are occurring at the end of a nine-month dry season. “When that gets going, it’s all over.”
To mitigate the problem, Mr. Hamilton said there needs to be more “defensible space,” meaning areas clear of fuel. Accomplishing that would likely require clearing dead trees.
As an example of a fuel-rich area, Mr. Hamilton, who is originally from East Hampton, pointed to Flanders, where the forests are filled with dead trees.
“That’s a dangerous situation, and that’s why you need trained firefighters, wildland firefighters, to know the fire behavior, the fire weather, the fire conditions, and know strategically and tactically how to attack that fire,” he said.
“Reduction of fuel is the way to go,” he said. “Letting Mother Nature take over and run the fires is how we end up with these intense, hot, out-of-control fires.” The Central Pine Barrens, for instance, frequently conducts prescribed burns to reduce fuel.
Mr. Hamilton also pointed to the Northwest Woods — with its “big old white pine forest” — and Napeague as local areas with the most “standing firewood,” a result of southern pine beetle infestations, which Mr. Hamilton also witnessed during the 2000s in Colorado.
The dead trees, called “snags,” can fall at any time: “Snags are widow-makers.” When the trees ultimately fall, they block paths for brush trucks.
Mr. Hamilton discussed the recent drought here, which lasted from August until late October. Right now, the region is still in a groundwater deficit, and Mr. Hamilton made a note of it while kicking around dirt last week.
At Napeague State Park, the Amagansett Fire Chief Chris Beckert has been working with the New York State Parks Department on clearing trails for firefighters.
“They’re still cutting trees, now clearing out brush. Then, hopefully next year, the plan is to start taking the brush out and making burn piles and getting rid of the brush to make it less flammable in there,” he said.
As part of the effort, the state plans to meet with local departments in May to hold a drill so that the firefighters can learn the trail networks and water sources. In addition, the Parks Department plans to provide detailed maps of the area.
“We’re planning,” the chief said. “We’re hoping we don’t need the plan, but we’re doing pre-plans in case there is a fire there.”
With wildfire, Mr. Hamilton got his start as one of the first responders in Rocky Point during the 1995 wildfires — at the time, he worked for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation — spending days on scene before shifting later that week to Westhampton, where wildfire had also sprouted.
In 1996, motivated by that experience, Mr. Hamilton traveled to Colorado, where he trained in wildland firefighting. Another trip the next year planted a thought: Long Island needed this kind of training.
After a third trip to Colorado, this one in 1998, Mr. Hamilton returned home with good news: The wildfire academy in Colorado would help him start his own academy in New York.
By the end of that year, with the help of Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Suffolk County Fire Rescue Emergency Services, and a loan from a friend — instructors had to fly in, after all — he launched the New York Wildfire Incident Management Academy. Since then, the academy has trained over 8,000 people from 38 states.
Following the wildfire in Orange County, N.Y., late last year and the devastating fires in Southern California this month, demand for the academy’s training has increased.
Compared to the 1990s, when Mr. Hamilton started the program, fires are larger, hotter, and last for a longer time.
As paid firefighters decrease nationwide, Mr. Hamilton pointed to one way to mitigate the wildfire problem: training volunteers.
“The problem with wildland fire is it occurs now and then,” said Mr. Hamilton. “That’s why we have to train every year. That’s why every year we do the introductory courses. We do mid-level courses, and we do senior [courses] because your training never stops in this program. You have to stay active.”
The introductory course teaches fire behavior, fire weather, and fire science. “If you’re going to be a wildland firefighter, you have to know: How is the environment going to react under conditions?”
Next, students learn about strategy, tactics, and tools. As for the latter, at the New York Wildfire Incident Management Academy, they use green lightweight Nomex pants, along with eye protectors, helmets, and gloves.
“The one thing when you’re a wildland firefighter is you have to understand fire, you have to understand the fuel types, the weather, and you always have your eyes on a swivel,” Mr. Hamilton said.
With that, the NYWIMA teaches about safe zones and escape routes: “Everybody comes home when we do this job. Everybody.” The introductory course lasts five days, with the last two being out in the field, where the firefighters learn to work as a crew.
For further instruction, students can go on to more advanced courses, some that are “basically people getting their Ph.D.s in fire science.”
“Firefighters — whether it be structural, wildland — work as a team, work as units,” Mr. Hamilton said. “And we’ll show you how to do that, and we teach that because that’s how the program works. It’s all of us working together. There are no individuals. It’s squads and crews and incident management teams working together to control and manage fires.”
Over the years, the academy has trained a handful of firefighters from East Hampton Town departments. Right now, the courses are offered Monday through Friday. However, “volunteer firefighters can’t take that time off,” so the academy is looking at ways to take the instructors to individual firehouses. The instructors, though, are often based out West, making coordination on an individual scale difficult.
“When I’ve been out there in those wildland fires, it’s been so neat to see someone wearing a NYWIMA shirt at those fires,” Mr. Hamilton said.
As for funding, the academy runs “strictly on tuition.” With that, however, “I’ve always tried to keep it cheap or inexpensive, so that a person who wants to come on their own, pay on their own, can afford it.”
In 2011, Mr. Hamilton stepped down as NYWIMA’s coordinator, but in 2023 he came back to serve as acting coordinator.
“I wonder how much longer I’m going to do it, but every time I get involved, it’s so hard to walk away because there’s so much need, there’s so much demand, and there’s so much desire for people to be trained,” he said.
