Firefighters respond to early morning brush fires in Melville and Calverton, police say

Firefighters battled brush fires early Friday morning in Calverton and Melville, authorities said. 

Riverhead police said the Calverton fire occurred at Southampton Excavation located at 3795 Middle Country Rd. A report posted on the Riverhead Fire Department website said fires had ignited around 1 a.m. at two large mulch piles on the site. At least 70 firefighters from 12 departments had the fire under control by 6 a.m. Riverhead Fire Chief Joe Hartmann said Friday there were no injuries reported.

A woman who answered the phone at Southampton Excavation Friday declined to comment. 

In Melville, 60 firefighters responding to a 2:30 a.m. call at a nursery near the north Long Island Expressway service road and Old East Neck Road battled flames on a pile of mulch 40 feet tall and 300 feet long, Chief Dave Kaplan told Newsday. "It was big," he said. 

Firefighters brought the fire under control by 6 a.m., but the pile was so tall firefighters needed ladder trucks from Melville, Wyandanch and East Farmingdale departments to attack it from above. Firefighters ran hoses hundreds of feet from hydrants on three sides of the pile, Kaplan said. 

Images from the scene show what appear to be smoldering piles of brush or mulch and Melville firefighters attacking the fire from a ladder truck and from the ground. 

The property owner could not be reached.

Parts of Long Island are in severe drought, and National Weather Service meteorologists have warned of elevated risk of fire spread.

"The drier the mulch, the easier it is for fire to burn and spread," Kaplan said.

The mulch fire was the first of its kind for Melville this summer, he said. No firefighters were injured. 

With Deborah S. Morris

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.