NJ wildfire now 40 percent contained

The raging fire in New Jersey's Pine Barrens could become the state's largest wildfire in 20 years

And we have team coverage of reporters covering the big story for you tonight. Let's kick things off with Fox News

Linda Schmidt, she's in Weartown. And Linda, fire officials just updated the situation there a little time ago

What did they have to say? That's right. First of all, good evening to both of you

And we're standing here in the command center where they did hold that press conference about 40 minutes ago

First of all, I want to say this. The conditions in New Jersey extremely dry, and especially here in South Jersey in what is referred to as the Pine Barrens area, and that is fueling this fire

What they did tell us a short time ago, so far, 12,500 acres have been charred

About 40 percent of the fire has now been contained. About 25,000 customers here without power

They lost power yesterday. They voluntarily turned off the power, JCP&L did, during this raging fire

And some people, though, their power has now been restored. But go ahead, take a look at this video here

This is from earlier today. 18 structures still being threatened along Route 532

And our Fox 5 videographer Christian Perez capturing this video right here of helicopters loading up buckets of water to drop on the fire in Ocean and Lacey Townships

Now, officials say this activity is going to continue until it gets dark tonight

About 500 firefighters have been battling this wildfire. About 5,000 residents were evacuated yesterday, but that evacuation order has now been lifted

That was lifted this morning, and people are now in the process of returning home

In all, about 1,300 homes had been in danger. And then take a look at this video from yesterday and last night showing the raging inferno down here

It started about 945 yesterday morning, and it closed down a huge chunk of the Garden State Parkway and Route 9

One commercial building was destroyed, along with some smaller structures and several vehicles

Thankfully, no homes were damaged and thankfully no injuries. Now, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service is battling these flames, continuing to battle the flames

along with the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management participating, New Jersey State Police

as well as local police and other local agencies Now officials down here updated us just about 40 minutes ago and here what they had to say These fires with the dryness and the winds they throw spot fires and embers

little tiny firebrands up to a mile out in front of that main fire. So even if we're successful

in stopping the fire on this barrier, this control line, there's still embers that rain down

shower down on homes. Now, the cause of this fire obviously remains under investigation

This all just started at quarter of 10 yesterday morning. But officials saying they do not anticipate having this fire totally contained until at least Saturday

Back inside to you. All right, Linda, thank you so much. And as the Jones Road wildfire rages on in Ocean County, smoke from the fire is spreading into the atmosphere

impacting air quality for areas downwind from the fire. And as the wind direction shifts, smoke could eventually spread over the city and through the Hudson Valley

Chief Meteorologist Nick Gregory is at the Weather Map tracking those conditions for us right now

Nick, what do you see? So this is a wildfire season that we moving into right And you get these very dry conditions like today with the relative humidity only down in the 20 25 percent range across most of the area So that element number one very dry air And we haven had a lot of rain of course lately So dry conditions from

that respect. Now, wind has been kind of variable. Mostly it's going to come out of the east tonight

and then eventually out of the south tomorrow. It's averaging about five to ten miles an hour

The wind gusts are not that high, even heading down into central New Jersey. But still, it doesn't

take much for some of those embers to sort of blow around even in a five to ten mile per hour wind

And here's the wind forecast as we go through tomorrow. Again, coming more southerly and you

see the speeds never really get all that great. They kind of stick around in that five to ten

mile per hour range. So hopefully that will allow the firefighters to have a little better control

of the fire. Again, we mentioned about air quality. So we do have this air quality alert

It's located again as you head down here into portions of Ocean County. And that's going to go

right through early tomorrow, but also we're going to see it continue here in the tri-state area

That's going to go until tomorrow night. And as far as rain, again, you can't really see much

coming our way here. Futurecast shows mild and dry conditions tonight in the 50s, getting back

into the 70s tomorrow. There's hope for rain, though, on Saturday, so that will also be a big

help. Natasha and Bianca, back to you. All right, Nick, thank you