Neighborhood News: Our Wildfires

In Prospect Park, Inwood, and beyond.

- Christopher Bonanos

AROUND 6:40 P.M. on November 8, two acres of Prospect Park began to burn. The fire started in or near the Nethermead, at the center of the park, and about 100 of the FDNY’s people put it out by midnight; one firefighter was slightly injured. The next morning, cars parked in Prospect Heights were dusted with sooty ash. You could smell smoke all over Brooklyn and as far away as midtown Manhattan. Or was that Jersey we were picking up? Because a swath of the Palisades had burned that same day. The air was “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” a phrase just specific