When a reporter for Bloomberg asked me if she could interview me I said OK, as long as I could have the rights to publish the article on my web site — Mira Rojanasakul said yes. I thought the article, written with Hayley Warren, was going to be primarily about air tankers, and those used in Australia in particular, but now that it has been published today I see that it also covers how climate change is affecting wildfires down under and in the United States.
In addition to being a writer, Ms. Rojanasakul is an accomplished graphics editor for Bloomberg. And that’s why I’m writing about this article and why you should check it out. She takes graphics to a higher level.
Here are some samples.
A very impressive large animated version of the graphic below is on the Bloomberg website.
Really well done. Astonishing the amount of data available to a creative thematic digital reporter. Good job.
The last graphic looks incorrect. The bar chart on the left appears to have costs that are closer to total annual wildland firefighting costs, not aviation costs. This document (https://www.fusee.org/documents/FLYING%20BLIND%20factsheet%206-3-16.pdf) estimates total aviation costs of $1.6 billion from 2007 to 2011 (page 2), and even the 2013 GAO report (https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/657000.pdf) cites a total of $2.4 billion from 2007 through 2012 (page 3). The bar chart indicates costs around four times as high, which agrees with the common estimate that aviation comprises about 25% of annual wildland firefighting costs.
Wildland fire policymakers desperately need better information on the sources and causes of wildland firefighting costs. The first reference I cited here does a terrible disservice by equating an escalating cost to Government with windfall profits, and presuming that the location of retardant drops in relation to boundaries like wilderness areas or communities alone is sufficient to determine the value of a drop. I would caution Wildfire Today readers against expecting that the Aerial Firefighting Use and Effectiveness study results will clarify the cost or cost-effectiveness question on its own – none of the information released on the study has ever identified cost as a specific area of study. Expect that further study would be necessary to incorporate AFUE findings into cost-effectiveness analyses.