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Governor calls for close of N.J. bombing range

PRINCETON, N.J. — Gov. Jon S. Corzine on Tuesday called for closing the bombing range believed to have sparked last week’s massive forest fire in the Pinelands.

“I will be strongly in favor of its closing,” Corzine said.

The fire charred more than 17,000 acres of Pinelands over six days before being declared fully contained Monday.

The blaze is believed to have started when a National Guard F-16 from the Warren Grove Gunnery Range along the Burlington-Ocean county border dropped a flare into the tinder-dry Pinelands during a training exercise.

“I would like to hear the pros and cons in a rational presentation of the facts, but it’s going to be a hard sell to convince me Warren Grove should remain open,” Corzine said at a news conference at the governor’s mansion.

The Air Force has convened an accident investigation board to review the incident. New Jersey’s two U.S. senators met in Washington with officials from the National Guard and Air Force regarding the incident Monday.

Corzine noted a history of mishaps at the range, including inadvertently causing wild fires, three plane crashes and the accidental strafing of an empty elementary school.

“We’re kind of in the three-strikes-and-you’re-out zone as far as I’m concerned,” Corzine said.

He emphasized a November 2004 incident in which an F-16 mistakenly shot up an elementary school when the pilot applied too much pressure on the trigger. That caused the plane to fire 25 rounds from its artillery cannon instead of simply activating a targeting laser beam as he had intended. The school was empty aside from a custodian and no one was injured.

“Firing on an elementary school caught my attention,” said Corzine, who was then a U.S. senator. “Just repeat the words. Had it happened during the day, this place would have been closed in a nanosecond.”

All training at Warren Grove has been suspended until the investigation is complete, officials said, and the military has promised to reimburse those who lost homes and property in the fire if federal investigations pinpoint the jet as the cause of the blaze.

Corzine said military efforts to control problems caused by the range “hasn’t proven to be successful.”

He said he wouldn’t be opposed to finding an alternative site for training, as long as it didn’t put life and property in danger.

Corzine said he planned to speak with the state’s congressional delegation and other federal officials about his desire to see the range closed, and hoped it could be resolved by year’s end.