The process of developing the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy required by the 2009 FLAME Act to seek national, all-lands solutions to wildland fire management issues, is nearing completion after three years.
The Missoulian has an interesting article that highlights some of the issues the planning is considering. Here are some excerpts:
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“The scientists aren’t going to say, ‘This is what you need to do,’ ” [former forest supervisor Alan] Quan said. “They’re saying, ‘Tell us what are the questions you want answered.’ And the answers may be so outrageous, it could force another way of thinking.”
The first question: If the country keeps fighting wildfires the way it has been, what will forests look like in 10 or 20 years? The second question: If we don’t like that trend, what would it take to change it?
And the trend looks bad. Last week, Doug Morton of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center released results of a new climate model and its implications for wildfire.
The short version of his findings: Extreme fire seasons will become two to four times more frequent in the next 30 or 40 years. Fire seasons like 2012, where 6.17 million acres burned nationwide, may become normal.
[…]
The national strategy suggests three big goals: Restore fire-adapted landscapes. Protect communities. Suppress fire. And it provides three tools: An unprecedented gathering of fire science data. A mapping project to visualize that information throughout the country. And a risk trade-off analysis to make sense of it all.
The data has been piling up for the past three years. The maps have progressed at the same time. The risk analysis should be ready next June.
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Thanks go out to Dick and Eric.
Brett
You are spot on about the wildfire world needing to meet up up with FEMA Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDA). No need for duplication and since FEMA has been doing this for longer than wildland fire, it is about time.
Now I already know there are IMT Teams gathering data during some wildfire events and GPSing those sites and putting them on maps. But I feel that is just the PRE PDA.
You need structural engineers, architects, county surveyor/assessors, and others in the PDA process and this is established through FEMA.
What I think is going on……The LMA’s want to get the credit for some of these missions cuz they have been through a few FEMA courses at EMI in Maryland and all of a sudden they are PDA experts. I beg to differ.
Just like wildland FFTR thinking they can fight fire better than many other folks and many IMT’s wanting to get into the all hazard all risk venue, the PDA and after process requires more than a few wildland fire tactical skills to do this work.
Sure the wildland world can take pictures and GPS sites, wheere they do not participate in is the “after” data collection that FEMA has to put together and then the EM world has to get alll the other professionals together to gather the data the FEMA way. I do not see any LMA specific paperwork for PDA, so in effect, FEMA still holds the cards in damage assessment for the Stafford Act and that is the way it ought to be.
Seems like the best thing to do for the LMA’s is to start DOING more Hazard Mitigation with the communities such as the FIREWISE program and get BETTER at that mission and the mission of getting together with the insurance companies, the zoning officials, and others that ought be making the “rules: about structure in the wildland urban interface. That is where the LMA ought to be worrying about things, not how to augment their skills in the FEMA world, which is admirable. BUT how IMPROVE their own performance in their own LANES of of timber and range management and ITS problems of Hazard MItigation…you know….. timber and fuels reduction…not how we get another training mission assignment with FEMA for more overtime?
Could that be a possibility? You know do the job Congress assigned you to do?
I’m looking for information on the number of houses destroyed by wildfires each year in the U.S. I found one source that estimated 9000 houses from 1985 to 1995. But I’d like to get information for more recent years. Does anyone know where that information is available?
Thanks,
Mark
Mark,
Try page 6 for a start. Insurance companies are the only ones that keep score. Don’t know of any source for trends. http://www.corelogic.com/about-us/researchtrends/asset_upload_file283_16407.pdf
Hi bean,
Thanks for the great reference. Figure 4 on page 7 had exactly what I was looking for. It seems to me that it should be possible to reduce the number of structures destroyed by fire each year by ~80 percent, at far less cost than the cost of rebuilding those structures.
Per Figure 4 on page 7, approximately 2700 structures per year were destroyed by fire from 2000-2008, whereas the value for the 1990s was about 900 structures per year. It seems to me the Powers that Be should set a goal to reduce the number of structures destroyed by fire each year to less than 500 structures per year within the next 5-10 years.
Thanks again,
Mark
I recommend that the wildfire world and FEMA world meet up to discuss how to work together to map, assess, plan, and communicate risk to change behavior in communities. FEMA has the Risk MAP program that the Risk Analysis Branch implements. Some Regions only focus on flood risk while others take an all hazard approach. The implementation of the Cohesive Strategy and Risk MAP program could benefit through an open dialogue between programs.
Here’s where we were 10 years ago:
fireplan.gov/reports/11-23-en.pdf