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A 19-year-old was accused of lighting a bonfire and leaving before it was extinguished, sparking one of the largest blazes in the state in decades.
April 24, 2025Updated 1:08 p.m. ET
A New Jersey man was charged Thursday with starting a bonfire this week that sparked the Jones Road Wildfire, one of the largest wildfires in the state in almost 20 years, officials said.
The man, Joseph Kling, 19, of Waretown in Ocean Township, faces charges of arson and aggravated arson in connection with the fire. He had left the bonfire unattended in the Forked River Mountains wilderness area in Ocean County, the authorities said.
The wildfire, which was first spotted from atop a remote, 204-foot fire tower in Ocean County on Tuesday morning, grew to 15,000 acres over three days. It shut down a stretch of one of the state’s busiest highways, prompted thousands of evacuations, destroyed a commercial building and threatened air quality from the Pinelands area in southern New Jersey to New York City.
The blaze was about 50 percent contained by Thursday afternoon, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, which continues to use fire engines, bulldozers, helicopters and ground crews to fight it.
Nearly 85 percent of wildfires in the United States are caused by people, according to the United States Forest Service, and stem from things like unattended campfires, burning debris and discarded cigarettes.
The abnormally dry conditions in the southern part of New Jersey meant there was ample fuel for the unattended bonfire to spread rapidly, officials said.
