RINGWOOD, NJ — Fire crews battled small fires across the northeastern US on Monday, including a blaze in New York and New Jersey that killed a parks employee over the weekend and delayed plans for Veterans Day.

A quarter of an inch of rain fell overnight Sunday into Monday in an area of ​​forest that straddles the border between the two states, giving firefighters a little respite.

The fire is one of several burning on the East Coast amid a lack of rainfall in September. A New York State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation employee assisting fire crews died Saturday when he was struck by a falling tree.

Fires on the East Coast were burning as much larger wildfires ravaged California.

Firefighters continued to make progress against a wildfire northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County that broke out Wednesday and quickly blew out due to dry, warm winds and gusty Santa Ana winds.

The wildfire in Ventura County has forced thousands of residents from their homes and has been 36 percent contained since Monday. The size of the fire remains about 32 square miles. The fire in the Mountain destroyed more than 170 structures, most of them houses, officials said. The case is under investigation.

In neighboring Nevada, authorities ordered the evacuation of hundreds of homes southwest of Reno and closed the main highway to Lake Tahoe after a wind-driven fire broke out on Monday and spread quickly through the mountainside vegetation.

About 3,000 people were told to leave, said Adam Mayberry, spokesman for the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District. Rain began to fall as local, state and federal crews arrived to battle the fire, Mayberry said.

Across the country on the New Jersey-New York border, crews worked to extinguish the 4.7-square-mile blaze known as the Jennings Creek Fire, although no evacuations had been ordered, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

Officials said overnight rains fell far short of what was needed to extinguish numerous brush fires that have broken out around New Jersey since the middle of last week. At least four other fires in central and northern New Jersey have been mostly or completely contained since Monday.

To find and fight the fires, crews navigate a maze of country roads, lakes and steep hills amid dense forests. The trees there have dropped most of their leaves on the dry ground, masking a potential danger.

“Under the surface leaf litter that’s falling off the trees, that stuff is dry,” Bryan Gallagher, a forest ranger with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, said at a news conference. “So now you get a little bit of rain that puts that surface fire out. But if it’s in the duff, it’ll stay there. It will smolder like a cigar until it dries out enough and then that fire can start again.”

A firefighting helicopter capable of dropping 350 gallons at a time was used to help fight the Jennings Creek fire. The National Guard deployed two Black Hawk helicopters for water drops, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said.

In West Milford, New Jersey, a Veterans Day ceremony was postponed until later in the month because of the firefighting effort, said Rudy Hass, the local Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. Commander.

“Many of those personnel currently involved in firefighting are veterans themselves and at this time we must keep them in mind as they spend many hours, day and night, doing everything they can to protect our great communities of that area,” he posted online.

Meanwhile, New York State Police said they are investigating the death of Dariel Vasquez, the 18-year-old state parks employee killed Saturday while fighting a fire near Lake Greenwood in New York state.

Health advisories were issued over the weekend for parts of New York, including New York City and northeastern New Jersey, due to unhealthy air quality from wildfire smoke, but conditions improved after rainfall and changes in wind direction.