The National Weather Service at Albuquerque has published information about the winter weather in New Mexico and how that could affect their wildfire season. Below are some excerpts:
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“…The grasses have since turned dormant and now provide significant carryover fuel. Wildland fire mangers next consider whether there has been sufficient enough heavy-wet snow to mat or compress the standing grass. Snowfall thus far has been well below normal but some areas did receive enough early season (November-early December) snow to partially mat down some of the previous grass growth. This is important because standing grass is much more susceptible to fire spread than matted grass. Figure 3 shows a photo series taken at similar times at a Sandia mountain location (at 8000 feet) east of Albuquerque from 2010 to 2014. The 2014 photo shows some grass compaction while the 2013 photo showed little grass compaction.”
The fire season which has only slowed down, not ended, in southern California will definitely be paused for the next week or so. About five to six inches of rain will be arriving in some areas of southern California Thursday through Saturday according to the Predictive Services Unit in southern California. Most of the rest of the state as well as much of Arizona will also see very heavy rain. Can we call this a “season ending event” for California?
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INTERAGENCY FIRE WEATHER CENTER – PREDICTIVE SERVICES UNIT
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2014
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GEOGRAPHICAL AREA COORDINATION CENTER
Two storms will bring rain to the region. The first storm, the weaker of the two will bring 1-2 inches of rain to the central coast with lesser amounts elsewhere today and tonight. A strong storm Friday will produce over 4 inches of rain and a few thunderstorms on south-facing slopes of Southern CA. Strong southwest winds will occur Friday. Elevations above 6,000 feet will see periods of heavy snow Friday and Saturday. The storm will depart Sunday afternoon with drier and warmer weather returning by Monday.
According to their web site, E-Semble “develops simulation software for the education, training and assessment of incident response and safety professionals, such as police, fire and medical services”. In the video above, they combined flight simulation software with their wildfire response simulation.
Fire simulations have changed since the 1980s. The one we used at Descanso Station in California used four overhead projectors behind a rear-projection screen, and two four-track reel-to-reel tape recorders that enabled eight possible sound effects. Involved in putting on the simulations were a director, an audio technician, a visual technician, and three to four role players. It was a very effective training tool.
Fire Prevention sign at the Myrtle Fire in South Dakota, July 23, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Insurance companies cancel policies
Some homeowners in the Scripps Ranch area near San Diego have received notices that their policies are being cancelled. The residents live near the areas that burned catastrophically in 2003 or 2007, fires that destroyed thousands of homes and took 16 lives. According to an article at 10news, one of the homeowners said, “They canceled us and also several people on our street, saying they couldn’t renew our policy because we were too close to the brush line.”
Which area near Colorado Springs will be next?
Some residents in the Colorado Springs area are a little concerned about the vulnerability of their homes after the fire disasters of 2012 and 2013. Last year the Black Forest Fire just north of Colorado Springs destroyed approximately 480 structures, and in 2012 the Waldo Canyon Fire on the other side of the city wiped out 347 homes. There is concern now that the Broadmoor area could be susceptible to fires that start in the Cheyenne Mountain area. Fox21 news has more details.
Two Senators on the same page as President Obama about fire funding
Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have praised President Obama for proposing that wildfires be funded in a manner similar to other natural disasters. Monday the President met with most of the nation’s governors and told them that wildfire funding in the administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2015 would be similar to provisions in a bill introduced in the House, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2014 (H.R. 3992), which would create an emergency funding process for fire response. If enacted, it would mean the federal land management agencies would no longer have to rob dollars from routine ongoing non-fire activities to pay unusually high fire suppression expenses.
Tom Zimmerman lectured at the University of Montana
Tom Zimmerman, a former Area Commander and Type 1 Incident Commander, lectured at the University of Montana on February 20. He was the first speaker in the Mike & Mabelle Hardy Fire Management Lecture Series which was established through an estate gift from Mike Hardy, a 1939 alumnus of the School of Forestry. Now the President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, Dr. Zimmerman, had a key role when he worked for the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service in promoting, training for, and establishing procedures for managing wildfires that are not fully suppressed. In fact, he has the dubious honor of being instrumental in coining some of the terms for these fires, including “fire use fire” and “fire for resource benefits”. Below is an excerpt from an article in the Missoulian about his lecture.
“…Fire has a natural role in the environment and we need to embrace that and accept that,” Zimmerman said. But we also need to keep preventing human-caused, unwanted fires. And we have to understand that the firefighting tools we have aren’t designed to protect the thousands of private homes that now stand at risk of wildland fires.
“You’ve got to keep working with your communities to explain what’s going on,” Zimmerman said. “You’ve got to keep laying out the facts. But there’s a threshold to understanding, and I don’t know if you can keep that buy-in for very long when people are breathing smoke all summer. We talk about restoring fire as a natural process, and then you have one that burns five times as much as the plan calls for. You can’t say, well we won’t burn anything for the next five years.”
Causes of firefighter injuries. From NFPA report. (click to see a larger version)
The NFPA collected statistics that break down the causes of firefighter injuries for all firefighters vs. volunteer firefighters. The chart above is an example of some of the data. The entire report can be downloaded here.
The only category in which all firefighters exceeded volunteers (except for “other”) was for “strain, sprain, muscular pain” where the percentage was more than double that of the volunteers.
