Wildfires ripped through New Jersey this past summer and fall, burning up acre after acre of forest and threatening homes and businesses.

In fact, 884 wildfires in total since last September.

Governor Murphy is launching a campaign called NJ Wildfire Smart to better understand where the state needs to improve its wildfire response.

Today, he met with members of New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection.

Ted Goldberg was at the event where he learned what New Jersey is doing to deal with its ongoing dry conditions.

As we head into the spring.

Coil field in Barnegat, it has some pretty cool vehicles used to fight fires.

Sadly, they've gotten a lot more use lately with the record drought contributing to a larger risk of wildfires.

Then that's interspersed with these sudden intense rainfalls that cause extreme flooding events.

And so this is the world of worsening extremes that we're dealing with.

In response, Governor Phil Murphy has launched a campaign called NJ Wildfires Smart.

Safety Mitigation Awareness Response Training.

Ahead of peak wildfire season beginning in a month.

State agencies plan to pooled together information and make it easier for people to read it and stay safe.

Things like wild risk mapping so that you can zero in on your home, your property, and see your level of fire risk, and then get important information and tips on what you can do to protect your home.

Some of the information is common sense, like not setting off fireworks in the middle of the woods.

Other advice is stuff you might not think of.

Within 0 to 5 feet of the house.

You can't have trees touching the house.

You can have vegetation touching the side of the house at 0 to 5 feet needs to be devoid of everything.

Governor Murphy announced that campaign at this roundtable with mayors affected by wildfire from the Pine Barrens all the way up to the New York border.

The mayors agree that they want to see more prescribed burns or controlled burning to clear the forest floor of things that can spark or accelerate flames.

I think that's really important that we look at doing some controlled burning more because I think that's going to prevent us.

And we've got some real big we got hundreds of hundreds of acres more burning.

I would say it's very good that they should do more burning.

The township is 80 square miles West Milford, and 32% of the township is Newark.

Watershed property.

Unfortunately, after Superstorm Sandy, there's a lot of dead wood in there.

And from what I understand, that that is a precursor to actually having a greater risk for forest fires.

The New Jersey Forest Fire Service has an annual goal of 25,000 acres of controlled burning.

But last year they went through just 20,000 acres.

And some years there are much further below that goal.

We do prescribed.

Burn every option we get, you know, every chance that we get.

But, you know, New Jersey's rough.

You know, you go from the burning season right into fire season.

Some of the things that we want to burn aren't necessarily state property.

Folks may not necessarily support the idea of burning.

We've really ramped up our prescribed burning program just in the last five years.

We've taken staff and dedicated a team to look at the prescribed burning that's going on throughout the state.

Other issues brought up at the roundtable include a reduced workforce at the Forest Fire Service, even as the bulk of the state is still experiencing severe or extreme drought.

We have a lot of volunteer.

Firemen within the 19 towns that I have in the ninth Legislative District.

I'm sure a lot of them would love to have a professional.

Career in the forest fire Service.

Make sure we have the.

Pilots for helicopters, make sure we have enough staff.

60 people.

Doesn't sound like.

A whole lot for.

For as much woods as we have.

No money is an issue but a lot of the equipment is very old and the forest fire and I give you guys a lot of credit in the world or wherever and what they have and the mechanics they put together these vehicles and equipment.

I don't know how they do.

Governor Murphy also gave a preview of the state budget set to be released in a couple of weeks.

It'll be a tough budget.

Most American states are living through what we're living through.

We deliberately overspent coming out of the pandemic so that we could get back on our feet faster.

And this is a year where we're going to have to trim our sales.

I'm happy to say we're not going to trim ourselves in the resources we put together to fight fires.

Murphy says the Forest Fire Service will get the same amount of money it received last year, despite the growing risk of wildfires statewide.

In Barnegat Township, I'm Ted Goldberg, NJ Spotlight News.