of fast-moving wildfire in Ocean County scorched nearly 4 000 acres in less than 24 hours firefighters are still battling the blaze being called the Jimmy's Waterhole fire Now 60 percent contained the state forest fire service says it broke out Tuesday evening in the area of routes 539 and 70 in Manchester Township Ocean County tearing through federal state and private land about 170 buildings and homes were evacuated on multiple roads in the Manchester and Lakehurst communities those orders have been lifted and residents are back in their homes but authorities say 20 structures remain under threat as they work to keep that outbreak contained a separate Wildfire has shut down the westbound side of Route 23 in Paseo County as Ted Goldberg reports it's all the results of the right ingredients for brush fires to begin warm dry and windy conditions we saw a wildfire 200 foot Flames reigning fire Embers I don't mean to be dramatic but this was a severe situation what's being called the Jimmy's Waterhole fire has grown to nearly 4 000 Acres torching parts of Ocean County near Lakehurst and Manchester people from more than 150 households had to evacuate yesterday but the Department of Environmental Protection says everyone's safe to return Thanks to a team effort including more than 30 fire departments these guys and gals managed to keep in a place and protect lives and property from that we cannot thank them enough this definitely had a high potential to be extremely catastrophic we had a really well coordinated effort and good team cohesion between all the agencies that were here last night everyone who was evacuate is now back in their homes there was no structure damage that I'm aware of at this time and no injuries and everyone was safe when this fire began to burn across South Jersey people in Northridge Jersey saw a brush fire jump from Jersey City to a recycling center all told the Garden State suffered through 15 wildfires yesterday thanks to Prime conditions for fires to start and spread that's pretty typical number this year though we have seen since the start of the Year an increase in the number of fires compared to last year so Fire season also got started a little bit earlier this year as well fire weather was severe yesterday due to low humidity strong winds and high temperatures currently we're in the leaf off season so that warm sun penetrates the open canopy of the of the trees right now since we haven't greened up so the forest floor and all the fuels are very dry so what sparked the fire in Ocean County the forest fire service is still investigating approximately 99 percent of wildfires are human caused whether that's accidental or intentional so we'll continue to look into it there's still a ways to go when terms of full containment of this fire a helicopter spent much of today scooping up water from Lake Horicon to keep the fire under control leaders warned that the fire will still grow a bit but they're not expecting any more Devastation we're confident that we have a good handle on this fire and so we're not requiring any additional mandatory evacuations we aren't out of the woods yet we're in a dry stretch here until Friday they're talking maybe rain this weekend but not much residents will see continued smoldering smoke and small Flames sometimes larger Flames as we burn out pockets of unburnt fuel so that'll be regularly occurring until we get significant rainfall to check the fire and sort of smother it as of this afternoon the forest fire service says the fire is 60 percent contained folks in Ocean County might still smell smoke and see hazy Skies while state agencies work to put out the flames in Ocean County I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight News [Music]