Pennsylvania
Wet weather breaks dry streak as several wildfires continue to burn in Pennsylvania, New Jersey
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Sunday night’s wet weather should help crews make progress on wildfires burning across the region.
A fire on Neversink Mountain in Reading, Pennsylvania, is 30% contained.
The brush fire broke out late Friday.
Meanwhile, the Wildland Fire that has burned more than 133 acres in Glassboro, New Jersey, is now 75% contained.
Since Oct. 1, New Jersey firefighters have responded to 537 wildfires that have consumed 4,500 acres, including about 40 fires that ignited between Friday and Saturday, according Chief Bill Donnelly of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.
Over the weekend, New Jersey health officials issued an air quality alert for Gloucester, Camden, Burlington, and Ocean counties.
Ocean County prosecutors on Saturday announced arson and firearms charges in connection with a 350-acre (142-hectare) Jackson Township fire that started Wednesday in New Jersey. The blaze was largely contained by the end of the week, officials said.
They said that fire was sparked by magnesium shards from a shotgun round on the berm of a shooting range.
Man charged with arson in connection with Ocean County wildfire
A volunteer forest ranger died while responding to a wildfire near the New Jersey, New York border.
A tree fell on 18-year-old Dariel Vasquez in Orange County, New York, on Saturday.
The wildfire, dubbed the Jennings Creek Fire, started in West Milford, Passaic County before spreading across state lines.
That blaze is zero percent contained. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
At one point over the weekend, New Jersey firefighters were battling at least six brush fires that ignited across the state, including a second wildfire in Passaic County that was threatening structures Sunday.
While Saturday marked 42 days without any measurable rainfall in the city of Philadelphia, and the driest streak in New York City history, many cities throughout the Northeast were expecting to see measurable rainfall on Sunday.
While the rain is expected to put a dent in the extremely dry conditions, some areas in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island will remain under red flag fire danger warnings, officials said.
“Make no mistake, though precipitation is forecasted, that’s not going to solve the problem that we have here with this wildfire,” Donnelly said. “It’s inevitable that this fire is going to continue to burn up until it reaches our control line.”
In New Jersey, the state Department of Environmental Protection is planning a hearing on Tuesday to review its water supply conditions.
ABC News and The Associuated Press contributed to this article.
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Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania
What the war with Iran could mean for gas prices in western Pennsylvania
The war with Iran could start impacting your wallet as soon as today.
Jim Garrity from AAA East Central says oil prices are up.
“They’re hovering around $72. They were pretty consistently around $65, $66 for a while,” he said.
Nationally, AAA said the average for a gallon of regular sits at about $3, up approximately six cents from last week.
In Pennsylvania, it’s around $3.12 a gallon, and in the Pittsburgh region, it’s around $3.24 a gallon. That’s actually down about four cents from last week.
Garrity added that gas prices this time of year would already be increasing, usually because of higher demand for the warmer months and the production of the summer blend of gas used for those months.
The impacts of what’s happening in Iran may not be immediate, which could be part of why our region and the state overall have not seen a spike yet, he said.
“It could be a couple of days later. It could be up to a week later,” Garrity said.
A lot of people are watching what happens with the Strait of Hormuz. Iran borders it to the north, and 20% of the world’s oil goes through it.
Iran is one of the world’s biggest oil producers, and China gets a lot of that oil.
“If there is an impact there, you could see oil start to come in from other parts of the world, which has a downstream effect on [the United States],” Garrity said.
One way you can save on gas if prices increase in our area is by slowing down.
“When you drive faster every five miles, over 50 miles an hour, your fuel efficiency is going down,” Garrity said. “You’re making the car work harder, making the gasoline consumption less effective.”
Garrity added that in 2022, when our area and many others saw some of the highest gas prices ever recorded, people changed their driving habits.
“We saw people make seemingly permanent changes to their driving behaviors, driving less in general, consolidating trips,” he said.
Pennsylvania
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