The U.S. Forest Service has developed a system called BlueSky Modeling Framework using multiple models that when combined in various configurations can enable:
- the lookup of fuels information from fuel maps
- the calculation of total and hourly fire consumption based on fuel loadings and weather information
- the calculation of speciated emissions (such as CO2 or PM2.5) from a fire
- the calculation of vertical plume profiles produced by a fire
- the calculation of likely trajectories of smoke parcels given off by a fire
- the calculation of downstream smoke concentrations.
The image above is a screen grab from a Beta website of an animation of a 3-hour running average of PM 2.5 using modeled fires. (Don’t ask me to explain it any further than that!)
More information about the system is HERE. You can configure your own animation at THIS SITE.
Could this possibly have helped at Yarnell? The ability to look at a map and see the actual distance to the ranch, the fuel load, the potential fire path with the wind’s changes…at least that’s what I understand this to provide.
I know no one can say for sure, especially since we don’t know the decision-making process that led them to go there. I’m just wondering how much it might help – if it could help prevent a similar tragedy. If decisions are based more on such information, or more on what your eyes see and your intuition tells you.
(I have a fear of fire verging on a phobia after nearly losing my entire family to a house fire in 1998. I remember to this day standing at 2:00 Easter morning, holding my ten year old step-sister in my arms – she had burned her feet on the way out, the only exit being within a foot of the fire – watching the house burn.
I give honor *all* firefighters, as it is a job I could not do, physically or mentally. The horror of what happened to those nineteen men – and almost happened to McDonough – at Yarnell haunts me, as I’m sure it haunts many others, and I just wish there was *some* way to prevent such a tragedy from repeating itself yet *again*.)