Memories of Sunrise Fire sparked by blaze

Monday's wildfire brought back memories of the four-day battle fought in 1995 against the Sunrise Fire, which burned 6,800 acres of pine lands and blocked off access to the East End during peak tourist season.

The fire started Aug. 24 of that year near Suffolk Community College's Riverhead campus and quickly jumped Sunrise Highway into the pine barrens. Investigators never determined the exact cause, but said it appeared to be intentionally set.

"It was hot, dry and long," Rick Clay, a former Mastic Fire Department chief, said in 2005, marking the blaze's 10-year anniversary. "The whole of Long Island came together . . . It was a very proud moment."

Had the winds come from the south, instead of the north, officials said at the time, the 1995 fire could have reached the Riverhead traffic circle, endangering homes and lives. Firefighters struggled with strong wind gusts that quickly changed direction.

In the Sunrise Fire's aftermath, officials began emphasizing the importance of conducting "controlled burns" of dense areas of vegetation to reduce the spread of unplanned blazes.

"There is nothing we can do about the weather. There is nothing we can do about topography. The only thing we can control is the fuel," Bryan Gallagher, then of the state forest rangers, said in 2007.