Up to 20 large air tankers this year
There could be as many as 20 large air tankers on exclusive use contracts this year, the largest number since 2009. This increase follows the downward spiral in the number since there were 44 in 2002. Fire Aviation has the details, but below is a list.
Galahad fire on the north rim grows to 2,702 acres
The National Park Service is managing, rather than completely suppressing, the Galahad Fire in Grand Canyon National Park. But one thing in their favor is a mile deep gorge, the Canyon itself, that provides a pretty good barrier on the south side. Below is the most current 3-D map — more details are in our main article about the fire.
Richard Rothermel receives award
At the Large Fire Conference in Missoula Dick Rothermel received the International Association of Wildland Fire’s Ember Award for Excellence in Wildland Fire Science. It was presented by Dr. Domingos Viegas, who said in part:
…Dick Rothermel started his activity in the field of forest fires in the sixties and was a leading member of a research team working on fire retardants and fire behavior research at the World famous Missoula Fire Research Laboratory for almost thirty years. Dick brought his engineering approach to develop a very innovative and comprehensive research program on fire spread. Based on the past work from his team and from others that preceded him, Dick used his skills and intuition to identify the most relevant factors of fire spread, to formulate quantitative relationships among them in a quite general form and develop the Mathematical Model on Fire Behavior Prediction. The famous report presenting the Rothermel’s Model as it is universally known was published in 1972 as we all know, is possibly one of the most cited documents in forest fire literature. The Rothermel model was incorporated in a consistent system designated Behave that was released in another historical report in 1983.
IAWF scholarships
The International Association of Wildland fire recently announced the award of two scholarships to students studying wildland fire. The recipients were Miltiadis Athanasiou, a PhD student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and Trisha Gabbert, a MSc student at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA. (As far as I know, the author of this artcle is not a relative of Ms. Gabbert.) More information.
Not only a brillliant researcher, but a class act and all-around nice humble guy too! Well deserved! I remember working in Area Command at Yellowstone in early September 1988 when Dick said something to the effect that “Gentlemen, we are going to see something tomorrow that none of us have ever experienced before.” Really scary when the “Guru of Fire Behavior” is in awe of what’s coming! Dick has also been awarded the IAWF Safety Award many years back for his work.