Colorado to use new system to predict wildland fire behavior

Janice Coen Gov. John Hickenlooper sign bill
Gov. John Hickenlooper traveled to an Arvada fire station to sign the bill that will implement a wildfire prediction system. Dr. Janice Coen, one of the developers of the system, is on the left. Photo provided by COHOUSEDEMS.

The Governor of Colorado signed a bill Wednesday that authorizes the state to spend $1.2 million over the next two years on a “revolutionary” wildfire prediction system that uses weather data, groundbreaking computer modeling, and high resolution satellite imagery to predict the spread of fires up to 18 hours in advance.

Below is an excerpt from an article at the (Colorado Springs) Gazette:

…”This bill will predict the intensity and the direction of fires 12 to 18 hours ahead of time. That is really important so we know where to direct our planes, the aircraft we had a bill for last year, and our firefighters,” said Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp, D-Arvada, who introduced the bill. “This is really revolutionary.”

Under the new law, the Division of Fire Prevention and Control will contract with a nonprofit Colorado-based research organization with expertise in atmospheric science to predict wildfire behavior. The National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federally funded program headquartered in Boulder, is the only state agency that meets that criteria. NCAR has used modeling to accurately recreate the behavior of historic fires, including the Yarnell Hill fire that killed 19 Arizona firefighters in 2013.

She said the new technology could be in place by next spring and will work with the state’s new aerial fire fleet, a multimillion-dollar investment into wildfire detecting and fighting aircraft lawmakers made in 2013…

Janice Coen at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is one of the scientists working on this program. We have written about her work previously:

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Barbara.

Ron Wakimoto — three decades of fire science

Ron Wakimoto
Ron Wakimoto. University of Montana photo.

The Missoulian has an interesting article about a fire scientist that influenced wildland fire practices and policy over the last few decades.

Below is an excerpt:

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Ron Wakimoto rearranged how we think about fire

Some fire scientists burn down hillsides. Some burn up whole fire policies.

Ron Wakimoto has done both, developing research that helps save the lives of firefighters and helps return fire to the woods after a half-century of fighting to keep it out. Last week, he wound up more than three decades of teaching fire science at the University of Montana’s School of Forestry.

“Ron has been a leader in terms of teaching, and we wanted the students to be able to hear from an elder,” said Colin Hardy, director of the U.S. Forest Service Fire Sciences Laboratory, just before Wakimoto spoke to the annual Mike and Maybelle Hardy Lecture audience last Thursday. “He taught us we need to think about fire management, not just fire suppression. On the political and management side, it’s about air tankers and people on the ground and big iron – it’s a big show. But among fire managers today, Ron’s speaking to the choir.”

“I’m the one who doesn’t wear the green underwear,” Wakimoto joked about his presence as the academic in rooms full of U.S. Forest Service officials. “Policy and science rarely go together.”

Wakimoto got his initial introduction to fire studies from Harold Biswell at the University of California, Berkley. Biswell was a controversial figure then, picking up nicknames like “Dr. Burnwell” and “Harry the Torch” for his avocation of fire as a natural part of the landscape…”

Ninth grader invents a wildfire warning system

The video shows Sahar Khashayar demonstrating a wildfire detector on the Tonight Show.

The Orange County Register interviewed Ms. Khashayar after she became a finalist for the 2014 Broadcom MASTERS competition. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

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“Q. Tell me about your wildfire early warning system – how does it work?

A. Basically what I did was I wanted to create something that 1) was cheaper than most fire detecting systems, 2) could detect multiple types of fires and not just smoke and 3) would be able to send a message to someone, so that if the alarm went off and the person wasn’t there, they would still know that it was happening.

Most fire detection systems, like the one we have right now, can cost $200 or more. My entire setup is about $56.

To solve the problem of different types of fires, we have three different sensors here. So there’s a gas sensor to detect carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or propane gas and all kinds of gases. There’s an infrared sensor, which detects light waves; and a temperature sensor, which is for the ambient temperature for the area it’s in. They’re all connected to a microprocessor, and you can hook it up to your own laptop so it can read the different input from the different sensors.

Right now it’s connected to Bluetooth, which will send a message to your phone if it detects a fire. If this device actually becomes implemented somewhere, we would probably use a GSM, which is basically Wi-Fi, so that it can send a text since Bluetooth has a shorter range.

Q. Where did you get the inspiration to create this device?

A. There have been a lot of fires recently – and not just in California, but all over the United States – and it’s costing a lot of money and even lives. So it’s becoming a huge problem for the environment, for the economy and people in general. It was a problem that needed to be solved.”

UPDATE: June 5, 2015:

The  Orange County Register has an update on Ms. Khashayar and her device.

Researchers fly into convection columns to study wildfire smoke

Below are excerpts from an article at Scienceline.org:

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“It’s a hot day in central Washington as a twin turboprop plane cruises southward. Through the cabin window, the jagged peaks of the Cascades rise in the west; to the east, a lush carpet of green vineyards and yellow wheat fields. But an hour into this flight, the blue skies give way to a white haze that rapidly turns to an alarming burnt orange.

The cabin begins to reek of smoke. The plane’s vibrations increase until the entire vessel is rocking and rolling. For a few seconds, the plane is literally free falling. All the while, outside the window, the sky grows darker and darker.

It’s another day at work for Arthur Sedlacek, an atmospheric chemist who is trying to solve one of the biggest mysteries in global climate change: the role that wildfires play when they spew millions of tons of soot skyward each year.

For five months in 2013, Sedlacek was part of a thrill-seeking team that flew into wildfire plumes in the Pacific Northwest and then Tennessee to measure exactly what’s in the soot. “Biomass burns are just this incredibly rich soup of raw material,” said Sedlacek, who is based at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

[…]

It’s a tricky scientific problem because fires exert both warming and cooling effects on the climate.

Black smoke billowing up from a fire’s center has a warming effect because dark aerosols absorb light, keeping that energy trapped in our atmosphere. But as winds push aerosols away from the fire, the particles gather a reflective coating of organic matter, which has a cooling effect. White aerosols scatter light, sending that energy back into space.

[…]

So the smoke from wildfires can impact the climate directly, by reflecting and absorbing sunlight, and also indirectly, by influencing the formation of clouds. But how will these effects change as the frequency of wildfires increases in a warmer, drier world?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Lewis said.

To try to answer that question as precisely as possible, Sedlacek, Lewis and their colleagues sampled 17 wildfires, seven urban plumes, and more than three dozen agricultural burns during 120 hours of flight time in 2013. Their research project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

[…]

Sedlacek recalls one mid-summer flight that got especially hairy. “I remember about this time, hanging on, and thanking God I listened to the pilot when he said ‘buckle up’ because one of my colleagues had not and he went flying.” But that wasn’t the worst of it. In the thick of the plume the flight got even bumpier. Sedlacek overheard his pilot pleading with his engine, saying “stay with me baby, stay with me.”

As soon as the aircraft safely landed, Sedlacek pulled the pilot aside to ask why he was so worried about the engine. The pilot explained that aircraft engines need oxygen to burn fuel, and there’s very little oxygen in a smoke plume.”

Vegetation fires affect snow melt

Wildfire, climate change and declining snowpacks are intricately connected. As temperatures rise, moisture-stressed forests can lead to bigger, hotter, longer and more frequent wildfires. In turn, wildfires can impact the amount and timing of snowmelt runoff according to a study by Anne Nolin and her Ph.D. student Kelly Gleason. The two researchers have presented new evidence showing that particles and burned woody debris from charred forests increase snowmelt and impact the hydrologic cycle — illustrated in this animation.

Study finds firefighters more likely to get two types of cancer

According to a recently published study, firefighters in three major municipal fire departments were more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer and leukemia than the general population.

Researchers examined the firefighting exposure and medical histories of 20,000 firefighters with over 1,300 cancer-related deaths and 2,600 cancer incidence cases in Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco who were on duty between the years 1950 and 2009. This was one of the largest studies of its kind, and was the first to relate the time elapsed during fire runs to cancer risk.

Among eight types of cancers examined, they found slight, but statistically significant positive exposure–responses for lung cancer and leukemia risk. The researchers wrote:

These findings contribute to the evidence of a causal association between firefighting exposures and cancer.

The study did not address the health effects on wildland firefighters who, unlike structural firefighters, do not have access to an effective breathing apparatus to provide them clean air to inhale into their lungs. There could also be significant differences between the harmful effects of vegetation smoke and that produced by materials in structure fires.

Some wildland firefighters, especially those on hand crews, are routinely exposed to smoke-filled air for hours each day when assigned to a large fire, sometimes for 14 days. At other times they can be stationed in a smoky environment 24 hours a day for weeks at a time when inversions trap smoke. This frequently occurs in northwestern California, for example on the Six Rivers, Klamath, and Shasta-Trinity National Forests. In those cases even non-firefighters working in administrative positions at the Incident Base have been adversely affected by breathing contaminated air.

As we wrote in January, 2011:

There needs to be a concerted effort to conduct a similar study on wildland firefighters. It should be led by a physician/epidemiologist and should evaluate the long term health and occurrence of cancer and other diseases among wildland firefighters. There is a lot of grant money out there and it should be possible to get some of it pointed towards this overlooked niche of firefighting.

Other articles on Wildfire Today tagged cancer and firefighter health.