A forest fire breaks out in New York, 160 homes are evacuated as the fires threaten the Northeast

As firefighters battled a wildfire on the New York-New Jersey border on Sunday that broke a containment line and led to the evacuation of more than 160 homes the night before, firefighters were at risk of the flames spreading.

The voluntary evacuation allowed firefighters to continue to respond to the Jennings Creek wildfire overnight and will remain on scene through Monday as efforts continue, Jesse Dwyer, a supervisor in Warwick, New York, said in a Facebook on Sunday -Contribution.

“Overnight efforts by local and regional firefighters to protect structures were successful and no structures are currently in danger,” Dwyer said.

The residents were allowed to return home. In an announcement earlier this evening, Warwick officials said the state of emergency in Orange County had been extended. They also urged people in the evacuation area to seek shelter so firefighters could continue their work.

Officials said the fire, which broke out on November 8 and burned more than 5,000 hectares of land in both states, was about 90% contained. But breaching the containment limit required an emergency response that included asking hundreds of Warwick residents to voluntarily leave their homes and opening an emergency shelter at a local middle school.

“We came home, packed the essentials, everything we had in the safe, like important papers, and then we came here,” Viktoria Kall told CBS News, adding that she arrived at the school around midnight.

Crews extinguished the flames with water dropped from New York Air National Guard helicopters and “contained the fire through fire lines,” New York State Park Police said on social media Sunday. It was previously said that the fire had only spread by four to five hectares.

“The small section of fire that breached a containment line did not reach the emergency line,” the release said.

The weather doesn’t cooperate

Weather conditions posed a challenge to suppressing the fire and no rain is expected to alleviate the cause until Thursday.

The National Weather Service issued a statement Sunday warning of the increased risk of wildfire spread in New Jersey’s Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Passaic and Union counties.

All of New Jersey and southeastern New York state have seen the worst stages of a prolonged drought that stretches from Virginia to Massachusetts and increases the risk of fires. Last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul banned outdoor burning across the state for the remainder of November due to drought conditions.

New York is facing wildfires

The recent wildfires in Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park have drawn attention to the significant increase in such incidents this year in New York City, whose fire department said it occurred in two weeks from November 29th to 11th.

Department Commissioner Robert Tucker is responding by forming a wildfire task force that will be made up of “firefighters, fire inspectors and tactical drone units in response to the historic increase in wildfires across the five counties,” according to the FDNY said on social media Sunday.

The department said it was also implementing safety measures across the city to reduce bushfires. Two of them near Amtrak tracks in the Bronx last week forced the suspension of the popular train service between Penn Station and Boston for more than 24 hours.

(This story has been updated to add new information.)

Contribution: The Bergen Record

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Jennings Creek Fire breaks containment at the New York-New Jersey border