FR EE Vol. 7 – No. 18 ♦ www.pinebarrenstribune.com
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March 11 - March 17, 2023 REACH NEWSPAPER BY PHONE: 609-801-2392
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Medford Township Mourns Police Sgt. William Webb, 22-Year Veteran of Force Who ‘Lived to Serve Others’
PREVENTING FIRE WITH FIRE
Well-Loved Officer Also Held Rank of Deputy Fire Chief and Volunteered as a Coach for Shawnee Baseball Team By Bill Bonvie Staff Writer
MEDFORD—If ever a municipality could be described as being “in mourning” for one of its own, that was Medford Township this past week following the unanticipated death of a beloved public servant, Medford Police Sgt. William A. Webb III, on March 1. And apparently, the feeling of grief over the sudden loss of the 46-year-old veteran officer, volunteer firefighter and coach extended well beyond the township’s borders, judging from the tributes paid to Webb by those who had worked with him in other venues and the hundreds of police, firefighters and friends who came to pay him their respects. Webb, a Medford Lakes resident, was described to the Pine Barrens Tribune by Medford Township Police Chief Arthur Waterman, whose department he had been a member of for the past 22 years, as being “a consummate professional who was committed to serving others” as well as “an outgoing, kind and gracious person who was really willing to help anybody, whether on or off duty.” “I can tell you right now that this is a tremendous loss to both the Medford Police Department and to the community,” Waterman declared. The versatile nature of Webb’s lawenforcement career was reflected in his See MOURNS/ Page 5
Photo By Bill Bonvie
New Jersey Forest Fire Service officials ignite a prescribed burn in a seven-acre grassy field on the edge of Wharton State Forest.
With More and More People Migrating to New Jersey’s ‘Wildland-Urban Interface,’ the State Forest Fire Service Further Demonstrates How It Uses Prescribed Burns to Protect Them from Wildfires, Sharing Info with West Coast Counterparts as Well
By Bill Bonvie Staff Writer
SHAMONG—It’s what New Jersey Forest Fire Service (NJFFS) Administrator and Chief Greg McLaughlin refers to as the “wildland-urban interface” – an area that an estimated half of New Jersey’s residents, he claims, live “within reach of” and are thus potentially exposed to the danger of an out-of-control wildfire in a state that, despite having the country’s greatest population density, is still approximately 40 percent forest land. That increasingly precarious proximity, according to Assistant Commissioner for
State Parks, Forests and Historic Sites John Cecil, is part of what motivates the service to set itself an annual goal of at least 25,000 acres of “prescribed burns” involving the preventive burning of potential fuels for dangerous conflagrations, such as those it has found itself having to battle on several occasions during the past year (including a 13,500 acre fire that scorched Wharton State Forest woodlands on both sides of the Mullica River last June). Not that it always achieves that objective, Cecil acknowledges, having only managed to cover about 17,000 acres of woodlands for each of the two preceding years. But
the latest indicator of how proficient it has become in its ability to respond to such events occurred just this past week when, with the help of local and area firefighters, it was able to get a 100 percent containment handle on a 418-acre blaze in the Stafford Forge Wildlife Management Area of Little Egg Harbor Township in southern Ocean County within just a few hours on the exceptionally blustery afternoon of March 7. And one of its standard tactics in such situations is the lighting of backfires – a similar fuel-deprivation technique used around a designated perimeter. See FIRE Page 6
INDEX Business Directory...................................10
Marketplace/Job Board....................................9
Local News.................................................2
Worship Guide............................................8
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