Wildfire Today

News and opinion about wildland fire

Wildfire Today

Author: Bill Gabbert

After working full time in wildland fire for 33 years, he continues to learn, and strives to be a Student of Fire.

National Science Foundation studied 21 wildfire plumes this year

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

Their instrument-laden C-130 conducted 16 research flights out of Boise

NSF smoke wildfire study 2018
National Science Foundation C-130 used for studying wildfire smoke in 2018. NSF photo.

A C-130 outfitted with research equipment was based at Boise last summer in order to study smoke produced by wildfires. The missions were conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research which is a unit within the National Science Foundation. The name of the project is a mouthful: Western Wildfire Experiment for Cloud Chemistry, Aerosol Absorption and Nitrogen (WE-CAN) Field Campaign.

The organization provided this overview of the work they did over fires this year:

Western wildfire smoke has a significant impact on air quality, nutrient cycles, weather and climate. The chemistry inside a smoke plume during the first 24 hours after emission affects reactive nitrogen partitioning, cloud chemistry and nucleation, and aerosol scattering and absorption, all of which can impact air quality and climate.

The NSF-funded WE-CAN ground-based and airborne field campaign aimed to systematically characterize the emissions and first 24 hours of smoke plume evolution from western U.S. wildfires. The project, led by Dr. Emily Fischer at Colorado State University, focused on three science questions related to better quantifying processes associated with fixed nitrogen, absorbing aerosols, and cloud activation and chemistry in wildfire plumes. WE-CAN deployed a large suite of measurement instruments run by both university and NCAR teams on the NSF/NCAR C-130 and also involved a ground-based mobile component.

The C-130 was based in Boise, Idaho from 20 July – 31 August 2018 to maximize the opportunities to sample smoke plumes from northwestern wildfires in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado during the peak of the 2018 fire season. All three sampling goals of WE-CAN were achieved. In all, during the 16 research flights based out of Boise, 21 different wildfire plumes were sampled, each with a detailed fuel assessment provided by the local regional Fire Service. Following the research science portion of the field campaign, a subset of the instruments were run during an educational component, involving three flights based out of Broomfield, Colorado over a two-week period in early September 2018. During these flights, the C-130 sampled smoke plumes from two more fires, including a prescribed fire in Colorado.

Several ACOM teams deployed measurement instruments on the C-130 for WE-CAN, including the Trace Organic Gas Analyzer (TOGA; PI Eric Apel, Rebecca Hornbrook, Alan Hills), the HIAPER Airborne Radiation Package (HARP) actinic flux measurement (PI Sam Hall, Kirk Ullmann), the PAN Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (PAN-CIMS; PI Frank Flocke), a Picarro CO-CO2-CH4 instrument and an Aerodyne Research Inc. CO-N2O-H2O instrument (PI Teresa Campos), and the NO-NO2-O3 (PI Andy Weinheimer, Denise Montzka, Geoff Tyndall). Preliminary data submissions for most data sets are due by 15 November 2018, and final quality controlled data are due 15 March 2019. Preliminary analyses will be presented by many teams at a targeted session at the 21st Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry at the AMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona in January 2019.

NSF smoke wildfire study
Aerial view of the Rabbit Foot Fire in Idaho on 13 Aug 2018. Smoke from the Rabbit Foot Fire was sampled by the NSF/NCAR C-130 during three separate WE-CAN research flights and several times for longer durations by ground-based mobile labs. (Photo credit: Rebecca Hornbrook)

Revised National Fire Danger Rating System beginning to slowly roll out

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 2 Comments on Revised National Fire Danger Rating System beginning to slowly roll out

This updated system that calculates wildfire danger has been in development for 18 years

The system that most federal and state land managers rely on to quantify wildfire danger in the United States was first developed in 1972. Updated in 1978 and 1988, the work is now complete on the third revision that began in 2000. Expected to be introduced two years ago, the latest edition is named “National Fire Danger Rating System 2016”.

National Fire Danger Rating System 2016The NFDRS tracks the effect of previous weather events through their effect on live and dead fuels and adjusts them accordingly based on future or predicted weather conditions. It is a numeric scaling of the potential over a large area for fires to ignite, spread, and require fire suppression action. It is derived by applying local observations of current or predicted conditions of fuel, weather, and topographic factors to a set of complex science-based equations.

“The [updated] system is being rolled out now”, Jon Wallace told us. Mr. Wallace is the Deputy Fire Management Coordinator for the Southeast Region of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. He said, “An interagency group led by the USFS is hosting Fire Danger Operating Plan/NFDRS2016 workshops around the country to introduce the new system as well as to help people update or develop fire danger operating plans.  The final replacement of the current system is scheduled for May of 2020.  We wanted to have a pretty good transition period so that people would have time to compare the old system with the new system.”

Another approach for predicting wildfire danger

A group of meteorologists and others in Chile and the U.K. have developed what they describe as “a novel probabilistic wildfire prediction system”, a daily wildfire warning system designed to be used by land managers in Chile. It predicts one thing the NFDRS does not address, the severity of a fire that may occur (low, moderate, or high). It also specifically addresses probability of fire occurrence, for example, 25% to 50%. The product they settled on for communicating the forecast appears to be a little complex at first, with 16 “risk levels” which are grouped into four “risk colors”, green, yellow, amber, and red.

wildfire risk probability levels weather
Table from the paper described above. Click to enlarge.

Click here to see all articles on Wildfire Today tagged “NFDRS”.

The wildland and prescribed fire programs in Mississippi

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 1 Comment on The wildland and prescribed fire programs in Mississippi

Minden Air’s BAe-146 air tanker program suspended

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , , ,

(This article was first published at Fire Aviation.)

Minden Air Corp aircraft BAe-146 T-46 T-55
Left to right: Tanker 46, a second BAe-146, and Tanker 55 (a P2V) at the Minden Air Corp facility at the Minden, NV airport. Photo: Google Street View, April, 2015. Tanker 55 was damaged in 2012 when it landed with only partially lowered landing gear possibly due to a hydraulic system failure.

For more than 15 years Minden Air Corp has been working on the concept of transitioning from their Korean War vintage P2V air tankers to a jet, the BAe-146. They acquired two or three of them and had nearly completed their work on what was going to be Air Tanker 46 when they ran out of money. Problems with hydraulic systems led to landing gear failures on two P2Vs, T-48 and T-55, taking out Minden’s last two operational air tankers, which no doubt affected their incoming revenue stream. Thankfully there were no serious injuries reported in those two accidents, unlike the crash of the company’s T-99 on October 3, 2003 that killed the two pilots, Carl Dobeare, 54 and John Attardo, 51. A lookout staffing a fire tower saw that P2V fly into a cloud bank as it was preparing to land at San Bernardino. It did not emerge and shortly thereafter they saw what appeared to be smoke at the top of the cloud. The NTSB described it as “controlled flight into mountainous terrain”. The two pilots had a combined total of more than 15,000 flight hours.

In October AvGeek filmed a report about Minden Air Corp at the Minden Airport 45 miles south of Reno, Nevada.

Tim Cristy, Flight Operations for Minden, said in the video when explaining why the conversion of T-46 came to a stop, “We ran out of money. Well, the engineering got expensive as all get-out”.

We attempted to call Mr. Christy and Minden’s CEO, Len Parker, to get more information but the number we had used before no longer works.

The T-46 project had progressed to conducting a grid test, which involves dropping retardant over a grid of more than 3,000 cups on the ground. In the video Mr. Cristy said the test went well. We are not sure if the aircraft ever received a Supplemental Type Certificate from the FAA which is a major hurdle to overcome in addition to approval from the Interagency Airtanker Board. After that they would have had to deal with the bewildering and unpredictable Forest Service contracting system before they ever received a dime from their large monetary investment.

retardant tank inside Minden's T-46 air tanker
The retardant tank inside Minden’s T-46. Screenshot from the AvGeek video.

The video below, published June 17, 2014, shows T-46 making its first test drops of water and retardant.

minden air corp bae-146 p2v air tanker 46
Tanker 46, a second BAe-146, and Tanker 55 (a P2V) at the Minden Air Corp facility at the Minden, NV airport. Photo: Google, June, 2018.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Brian.
Typos or errors, report them HERE.

Los Angeles Fire Department’s crew of volunteer firefighters

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 3 Comments on Los Angeles Fire Department’s crew of volunteer firefighters
Los Angeles Fire Department's Crew 3 volunteers
Los Angeles Fire Department Crew 3 constructs fireline. Screenshot from LAFD video below.

Volunteer firefighters are the backbone of many fire departments around the world — many active departments have no paid personnel. Usually volunteer firefighters are found in small or perhaps medium-sized towns and cities, especially in rural areas.

I have to admit —  I was surprised to discover that the second most populous city in the United States has volunteer firefighters. Los Angeles, with a population of almost 4 million people, uses volunteers in their Fire Department on what they call Crew 3, a crew that uses hand tools to construct fireline on the edge of fires in order to stop the spread.

Every member on the crew must take the required online training courses, pass the Pack Test, and then participate in two weeks of field training.

Most of the crew members hope the experience on the crew will pave the way to a full time job with the fire department.

29 have graduated recently from the Trapper Creek Job Corps firefighter program

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 1 Comment on 29 have graduated recently from the Trapper Creek Job Corps firefighter program

The Ravalli Republic has an uplifting story about the recent graduates of the firefighter training program at the Trapper Creek Job Corps center south of Darby, Montana. The nine individuals that were recognized on December 10 are in addition to the 20 that previously graduated and left the facility. The graduates were given coats as a symbol of their achievements.

Below is an excerpt from the article:

…This past summer they learned that struggle can lead to something good. They learned that what they thought were their limits weren’t really where it stops at all. They discovered that they had much more buried deep inside of themselves than they ever imagined.

“You learned to embrace the suck,” said Trapper Creek’s Fire Training Specialist Danny Atkinson. “You found that struggle can become the goal. When it sucks the most, life is good. You discovered that you are a lot damn tougher than you ever thought you were.”

As a team that started with 44 members, they put in 71,774 hours on 277 assignments that took them to 11 states as far away as Wisconsin. Along the way, they and others at Trapper Creek Job Corps earned $1.2 million in gross pay. There is only one other Job Corps Center that’s broken the $1 million mark before. Trapper Creek has done that two years in a row.

“Some of our students have between $5,000 and $20,000 in their bank accounts,” said Justin Abbey, Trapper Creek’s Fire Management Officer. “That’s the money that they’ll be able to tap into to relocate, buy a car and pay for that first and last month’s rent. It helps set them up for success…”

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Paula.
Typos or errors, report them HERE.