The National Park Service has been holding “Fire and Aviation Photo Contests” since 2002. The first, second, and third place winners for the 2010 contest were recently announced for the eight categories. According to the NPS web site:
The contest fosters community interest and involvement in NPS fire and aviation management activities and encourages entries from not only the National Park Service, but other government employees and the public.
The web page that shows the winners has some excellent photos. If you go to the site, you will see thumbnails of each one, and if you click on them they will open in a much larger size, of one to three MB each.
Over the next week or so we will display some of the winners on Wildfire Today.
The above photo took second place in the Fire Apparatus category, and was shot by Bob Greenburg of Death Valley National Park and submitted by Matthew Martin of the same park. The web site says it was taken in “DELA”, which is Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania. But we think that’s is typo, and should read “DEVA” which is Death Valley NP. We are attempting to confirm the correct location. (UPDATE @ 8:50 a.m. MT, Feb. 12: we inquired, but have not received an answer from the NPS about this. However we just checked their web site again and noticed that they quietly changed the photo’s location to “DEVA”, Death Valley NP.
How to decode the NPS’ four-letter designator system
The NPS uses four-letter designators for all of their 394 units. The secret to decoding them is this: if a unit has only one word, such as Denali National Park, the designator is the first four letters, in this case “DENA”. The type of unit, such as National Park, National River, or National (whatever) is ignored. If the unit has two or more words in the name, such as Little River Canyon National Preserve, the first two letters of the first two words are used, in this case “LIRI”.
To visit the web site any NPS unit, just add the four-letter designator to the end of this: nps.gov/
