Bill Gabbert

Willdfire smoke exposure linked to increased risk of contracting COVID-19

BillJuly 30, 2021Uncategorizedfirefighter health, smoke4 Comments

A new study finds a 17.7 percent rise in COVID-19 cases after a prolonged 2020 wildfire smoke event in Reno, Nev.

Lava Fire, pyrocumulus at 1:42 p.m. June 28, 2021.

By Kelsey Fitzgerald

Wildfire smoke may greatly increase susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to new research from the Center for Genomic Medicine at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Washoe County Health District (WCHD), and Renown Health (Renown) in Reno, Nevada.

In a study published earlier this week in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, the DRI-led research team set out to examine whether smoke from 2020 wildfires in the Western U.S. was associated with an increase in SARS-CoV-2 infections in Reno.

To explore this, the study team used models to analyze the relationship between fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) from wildfire smoke and SARS-CoV-2 test positivity rate data from Renown Health, a large, integrated healthcare network serving Nevada, Lake Tahoe, and northeast California. According to their results, PM 2.5 from wildfire smoke was responsible for a 17.7 percent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases that occurred during a period of prolonged smoke that took place between Aug. 16 and Oct. 10, 2020.

smoke forecast — During the time of the study, a map showed the forecast for the distribution of near-surface wildfire smoke at 6 p.m. MDT August 23, 2020. RealEarth.

“Our results showed a substantial increase in the COVID-19 positivity rate in Reno during a time when we were affected by heavy wildfire smoke from California wildfires,” said Daniel Kiser, M.S., co-lead author of the study and assistant research scientist of data science at DRI. “This is important to be aware of as we are already confronting heavy wildfire smoke from the Beckwourth Complex fire and with COVID-19 cases again rising in Nevada and other parts of the Western U.S.”

Reno, located in Washoe County (population 450,000) of northern Nevada, was exposed to higher concentrations of PM2.5 for longer periods of time in 2020 than other nearby metropolitan areas, including San Francisco. Reno experienced 43 days of elevated PM2.5 during the study period, as opposed to 26 days in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“We had a unique situation here in Reno last year where we were exposed to wildfire smoke more often than many other areas, including the Bay Area,” said Gai Elhanan, M.D., co-lead author of the study and associate research scientist of computer science at DRI. “We are located in an intermountain valley that restricts the dispersion of pollutants and possibly increases the magnitude of exposure, which makes it even more important for us to understand smoke impacts on human health.”

Kiser’s and Elhanan’s new research builds upon past work of studies in San Francisco and Orange County by controlling for additional variables such as the general prevalence of the virus, air temperature, and the number of tests administered, in a location that was heavily impacted by wildfire smoke.

“We believe that our study greatly strengthens the evidence that wildfire smoke can enhance the spread of SARS-CoV-2,” said Elhanan. “We would love public health officials across the U.S. to be a lot more aware of this because there are things we can do in terms of public preparedness in the community to allow people to escape smoke during wildfire events.”

More information:

Additional study authors include William Metcalf (DRI), Brendan Schnieder (WCHD), and Joseph Grzymski, a corresponding author (DRI/Renown). This research was funded by Renown Health and the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development Coronavirus Relief Fund.

The full text of the study, “SARS-CoV-2 test positivity rate in Reno, Nevada: association with PM2.5 during the 2020 wildfire smoke events in the western United States,” is available from the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-021-00366-w

NOAA satellites zoom in on wildfires

BillJune 17, 2021Uncategorizedsatellite4 Comments

By NOAA

Fire weather is heating up across the western United States, exacerbated by an intense heatwave and ongoing severe drought. NOAA satellites are monitoring numerous wildfires and keeping watch on areas primed for ignition. As of June 17, 2021, 33 large fires are currently active, burning more than 400,000 acres in 10 states. More than one million acres have burned across the country so far in 2021.

NOAA satellites zoomed in on several of the major fires burning in the western U.S, including the Telegraph and Mescal Fires in southeastern Arizona, Pack Creek and Bear Fires in Utah, and the Robertson Draw Fire in Montana.

GOES-16 (GOES East) and GOES-17 (GOES West) are monitoring these fires in near-real time. Flying in geostationary orbit, they keep constant watch over the same area, and help to locate fires, detect changes in fire behavior, and predict their motion. They also provide important information about the size, temperature, and intensity of fires that would otherwise be unavailable.

Fire temperature imagery from geostationary satellites is particularly useful to identify new hot spots and the direction those hot spots are moving, especially for fast-growing or newly-formed fires. Specialized imagery that combines data from multiple channels on the satellites’ Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument, allows both a fire’s hot spot and associated smoke plume to be visualized.

Satellite imagery of several of the fires, including the Pack Creek and Bear Fires in Utah and the Telegraph Fire in Arizona, reveal impressive plumes with thick pyrocumulus clouds, which form when there is enough moisture and atmospheric instability over an intense heat source and smoke.

JPSS satellites feed the HRRR-smoke model, the first weather forecast model in the U.S. to monitor wildfire smoke. The model relies on multiple satellite measurements, such as heat energy, wind speed, rainfall and atmospheric temperature, and combines these data with vegetation maps. The combined data is mapped to a three-dimensional grid that provides information on surface level smoke, and smoke high in the atmosphere. The model also produces a forecast with detailed updates on the height of the smoke plume, the amount of smoke produced and the direction it’s expected to move.

The HRRR-smoke model from June 15, for example, shows smoke from the fires in Arizona and Utah moving north and east across the country.

The benefits provided by the latest generation of NOAA satellites aren’t just seen during a fire but are important in monitoring the entire life cycle of a fire disaster. Data from the satellites are helping forecasters monitor drought conditions, locate hot spots, detect changes in a fire’s behavior, predict a fire’s motion, monitor smoke and air quality, and monitor the post-fire landscape like never before.

Timely satellite imagery is critical, potentially life-saving information in a dynamic fire environment. In the past, incident meteorologists had a single low-resolution image that updated every 15 minutes — typically the image was already 20 minutes old when it arrived at the forecaster. Now, GOES-16 and GOES-17 frequently detect fires before they are spotted on the ground – as early as 10 to 15 minutes before emergency notifications to 911.

What do we owe wildland firefighters?

BillJune 15, 2021June 16, 2021Uncategorizedopinion, pay10 Comments

By Jonathon Golden

“It’s like having gasoline out there,” said Brian Steinhardt, forest fire zone manager for Prescott and Coconino national forests in Arizona, in a recent AP story about the increasingly fire-prone West.

Now something else is happening — and at the worst possible time.

Federal firefighters are leaving the workforce and taking their training and experience with them. The inability of federal agencies to offer competitive pay and benefits is creating hundreds of wildland firefighting vacancies.

Vacancies, of course, limit how much federal firefighters can do. If Western communities want to be protected, they need to ensure that their firefighters receive better pay and benefits.

In my 11 years of work as a wildland firefighter, I’ve managed aircraft, trained people and run fires myself, but I also did outreach and recruitment for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. I know how hard it is for hiring managers to make 2,000 hours of grueling work, crammed into six exhausting months, sound appealing when the pay is $13.45/hour. The pay doesn’t come close to matching the true demands or everyday dangers of the job.

Federal wildland firefighters, by necessity, are transient workers. During the fire season — now nearly year-round — they must be available to travel anywhere in the United States at any time. And to advance in their career, they have to move to other federal duty stations to gain more qualifications.

Finding affordable housing has always been a problem for career firefighters on a federal salary. To make matters worse, federal agencies revoked the “Transfer of Station” stipend for career employees, which helped offset the cost of moving. Just recently, a national forest supervisor also revoked a “boot stipend.” It might sound minor, but it isn’t: When you’re in the firefighting business, boots tough enough to save your life can easily cost you $500.

Some states aren’t relying on the government to act quickly. “We aren’t just waiting for the next crisis to hit,”said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in establishing an $80.74 million Emergency Fund that delivers an additional 1,256 seasonal firefighters to boost CALFIRE’s ranks. This Emergency Fund is in addition to the governor’s $1 billion budget request for California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan.

In Washington, state legislators unanimously passed a $125 million package that will enable the state’s Natural Resources Department to hire 100 more firefighters. The legislation furthers the state’s efforts to restore forest health and creates a $25 million fund to ensure community preparedness around the state.

Utah’s House Bill 65, recently signed into law, appropriates money to help Utah’s communities offset the cost of wildfire suppression. Most importantly, it commissions a study to evaluate the current pay plan for firefighters within Utah’s Natural Resources Department.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Casey Snider, was amazed to learn that frontline wildland firefighters make more money at McDonald’s: “These positions are critical,” he said. “They are the first ones on fires.” This year, Utah has already had five times the number of wildfires it normally experiences in a year.

And firefighters are organizing and speaking up. The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters is working to halt the exodus of firefighters from federal agencies by advocating for pay parity with state and local fire protection agencies. The group also supports initiatives to assist the physical and mental health of firefighters and their families. The statistics they highlight are shocking: Wildland firefighters have a suicide rate 30 times higher than the average. They also experience high incidences of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer.

There is talk on the federal level of creating a permanent, year-round firefighting workforce. I think this is a necessary step, but it won’t fix the workforce capacity issue unless increased pay and benefits are used to encourage the recruitment and retention of federal firefighters.

We all know that today’s wildfires are longer, more damaging and more frequent than ever before. We also know that men and women are putting their lives on the line for less than they’d earn at a McDonald’s.

Our firefighters do all this to protect our lives, our forests and our communities. We owe them at least a living wage and a chance for a healthy life. I hope more states and legislators will start paying attention. This is a debt that needs to be paid.

Jonathon Golden is a writer for Writers on the Range, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Park City and has 12 seasons as a wildland firefighter. He resigned in 2019 to prioritize his family and find a sustainable career. In 2020 Jonathon started Golden Group, LLC, a consulting company that focuses on domestic and international conservation initiatives as well as national security.

Excellent article summarizes the plight of the federal firefighter

BillJune 4, 2021Uncategorizedpay13 Comments

The ability to accomplish a lot when given very little is, necessarily, the hallmark of federal firefighting.

Firefighter in Wind Cave National Park — Firefighter on the Cold Fire in Wind Cave National Park. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

There have been articles published in recent months describing the working conditions, miserable pay, and dangers to the mental and physical heath of federal wildland firefighters. Some of the attention is due to the efforts of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters who have been reaching out to politicians and the media.

The fact that hundreds of federal firefighter positions are vacant across the nation is a product of the inability to compete in the job market with public and private organizations that actually pay their employees a living wage without requiring them to be away from home for up to 120 days each year. It is a complex subject that few understand and is difficult to summarize quickly.

The best article I have read that describes the plight of federal firefighters was published this week in Grist by Zora Thomas. I implore you to read it and pass it along to someone who NEEDS to understand. It also has excellent photos taken by Ms. Thomas and other firefighters.

Below is an excerpt — how the article ends.

…The day after the blowout on the Bear Fire, one of our leads was hit by the top of a tree. He was on his own, down in a steep drainage, orchestrating a handful of helicopters to cool down a leading edge of the fire and give the rest of us time to prepare a road to burn off. He didn’t see the dead top of the tree, or hear it fall. He’s lucky to be alive.

The piece that hit him was large enough to be fatal, but decomposed enough to break on impact. It smashed him down the steep hill he was working on, filling pockets on his pack with rot and woodchips. He’s been in wildland fire for most of his adult life and has had plenty of close calls, but this one was enough to make him call his mom, just to say hi.

On our way back to camp that evening, after he hiked out of the ravine and rejoined the crew, he mentioned the incident so casually that it took me a moment to register what he was saying. Tree strikes are killers, the stuff of nightmares, and he spoke with the blasé manner of someone describing how he’d been cut off in traffic.

As he told the story, we laughed and joked, glad he was OK. But the exchange left me sobered and bewildered. After a decade of experience, the accumulation of innumerable specialized skills, and the consistent risk of his life and his health, he still only merits the title of “forestry technician,” and an hourly pay rate comparable to a senior barista at my local Starbucks. There’s a damaging disconnect between the lionized figure of the firefighter and the reality of the men and women who fight more fire than anyone.

The sub-headline is a quote from Ms. Thomas’ article.

Fight fire aggressively, having provided for mental health first

BillMay 19, 2021May 19, 2021Uncategorizedfirefighter health, mental health12 Comments

American Elk prescribed fire Wind Cave National Park — A firefighter ignites the American Elk prescribed fire in Wind Cave National Park, October 20, 2010. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

By Anonymous

Note: For the purposes of this article and ease of language I will be referring to “forestry technicians” (our official job title) as “wildland firefighters.” I and many of my cohort strongly identify with the latter classification.

I am a federal wildland firefighter experiencing mental health issues. It doesn’t matter who I am, where I work, or what my demographics are because there are many like me. In the middle of my career, neither fresh nor wise, I am facing some tough questions. By explaining my perspective I hope to shed light on this worsening epidemic. Maybe my experience will encourage people to check in on their employees, peers, family or friends in fire. Perhaps with the countless other stories coming out these days policy-makers will listen and start to adjust their tactics.

There have been bad fire seasons before; I’ve worked too many hours with unpleasant people, had tyrant bosses, and experienced a smattering of sexual harassment. There was Yarnell. I’ve weathered it all not with grace but with sheer tenacity. Of course I’ve made my share of mistakes, talked back when I should have kept my mouth shut, kept my mouth shut when I should have spoken up, but I consider myself an average federal employee in this regard. I’m good at my job and maintain a high level of passion for it.

In all honesty I’ve struggled with mental health in some form most of my life. I do not believe this invalidates my experience or the responsibility of the agency to recognize its problems. Certainly the all-or-nothing seasonal nature and high levels of true stress don’t help and even augment mental health issues. Lack of commensurate pay and benefits take their toll on morale as well. A global pandemic, amplified racial tensions, and drastic climate change contribute to the daily anxiety of most people whether they are in fire or not. Our issues are not unique but they are perhaps amplified, and with more potential for danger. In any case here I am now, taking leave from a job I mostly love and mostly need to get by.

I’m convinced my first season on a hotshot crew saved my life. This occupation has provided me structure, financial stability, and camaraderie. In return it has asked of me integrity and accountability. I spent the whole winter before that first season with dark ideas permeating my thoughts. Somehow, two weeks before critical I snapped out of it enough to show up and not quit. It was a tough start but I caught up and halfway through the summer I was walking around laughing with a saw on my back.

Currently it’s as if the dark portion of my mind that usually takes up 5%-20% has almost completely taken over. This part of my brain wants to break me down, call myself an imposter, and ultimately kill me. I am in sink or swim mode; I am trying to save my own life this time. It became clear as the season drew closer that I was not mentally prepared to be the high-functioning firefighter I usually am. I chose to draw back and focus on my personal life rather than risk becoming a liability on the job.

So often we think of our “work life” and “personal life” as being distinct and separate entities. I would like to express that this mentality is highly detrimental to the lives of employees. We cannot adequately perform our duties when there is such a rift between what we ask of firefighters and what we provide to them. Keeping your personal life separate is an old-guard means of avoidance. It also denies the possibility that our two lives can actually intertwine and complement each other. If we talk about the “fire family” and supporting our people, we cannot ignore the high numbers of individuals currently struggling.

In my fight against mental illness I am extremely and perhaps rarely privileged to have a supervisor who convinced me not to resign. I am further lucky that this person’s bosses trust them to make this call. Maintaining my health insurance is proving critical to my efforts at achieving wellness. This time off is not without consequence for me. First and most obviously, I am experiencing a drastic reduction in my usual income without roughly 1000 hours of overtime to bank on. I will miss out on months of on-the-job training and the professional development and networking that happens so fluidly in the field. Thus far my fancy federal health benefits have fallen short as my insurance company keeps rejecting my doctor’s efforts to get me the treatments I need. More personally still, I carry guilt and shame from not showing up this season, including a sense of failure from not exercising my skills and attributes alongside my coworkers.

One of my greatest fears when I consider my anticipated return to work is that people will find out. They will know I cracked. They may lose trust in my abilities; they may invalidate my strengths in light of my weaknesses. What will future potential supervisors say when they see I took an extended absence during what is sure to be a busy year in fire? I feel the weight of every destructive incident on my back, and I feel comfortable asserting that this is a common feeling. I do not however possess the mental capacity right now to worry about all that. I have made the selfish but necessary call to choose myself in this battle.

Droughts are deepening, climates are changing, and we always seem to work short-handed. If I am not alone in my mental health crisis, which I am not, how will we continue to effectively manage increasingly larger and more disastrous fires? I would argue that we should not go another shift without providing the support our people need. We must allow our wildland firefighters to show vulnerability in the face of so much global chaos, and seek to do the actual work it takes to remedy this. Furthermore, we need to collectively fight the deep-rooted professional and cultural stigma around mental health. Just as if it were a catastrophic fire we must fight aggressively and with great urgency.

Note from Bill:

Help is available for those feeling really depressed.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255. Online Chat.
Anonymous assistance from the Wildland Firefighter Foundation: 208-336-2996.
National Wildland Fire and Aviation Critical Incident Stress Management Website.
Code Green Campaign, a first responder oriented mental health advocacy organization.
A new organization, Fire Mind, will be dedicated to helping wildland firefighters and expects to be fully operational by June 30, 2021.
Would you rather communicate with a counselor by text? If you are feeling really depressed or suicidal, a crisis counselor will TEXT with you. The Crisis Text Line runs a free service. Just text: 741-741

Study offers earliest evidence of humans changing ecosystems with fire

BillMay 15, 2021Prescribed FireAfrica, history, prescribed fire, research

Evidence for anthropogenic fire 85,000 years ago in Africa may reflect intentional use at the landscape scale, widespread populations creating more or larger on-site ignitions, alteration of fuel availability through harvesting of the understory, or a combination of these activities.

This article was first published at Yale News

By Mike Cummings

Mastery of fire has given humans dominance over the natural world. A Yale-led study provides the earliest evidence to date of ancient humans significantly altering entire ecosystems with flames.

The study, published on May 5 in the journal Science Advances, combines archaeological evidence — dense clusters of stone artifacts dating as far back as 92,000 years ago — with paleoenvironmental data on the northern shores of Lake Malawi in eastern Africa to document that early humans were ecosystem engineers. They used fire in a way that prevented regrowth of the region’s forests, creating a sprawling bushland that exists today.

“This is the earliest evidence I have seen of humans fundamentally transforming their ecosystem with fire,” said Jessica Thompson, assistant professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the paper’s lead author. “It suggests that by the Late Pleistocene, humans were learning to use fire in truly novel ways. In this case, their burning caused replacement of the region’s forests with the open woodlands you see today.”

Thompson authored the study with 27 colleagues from institutions in the United States, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Thompson led the archaeological work in collaboration with the Malawi Department of Museums and Monuments; David Wright of the University of Oslo, who led efforts to date the study’s archaeological sites; and Sarah Ivory of Penn State, who led the paleoenvironmental analyses.

Stone Age artifacts Lake Malawi — Stone Age artifacts excavated near the shores of Lake Malawi in eastern Africa, combined with paleoenvironmental data drawn from the lakebed, provides the earliest evidence of ancient humans manipulating their ecosystem with fire.

The artifacts examined by the researchers are of the type produced across Africa in the Middle Stone Age, a period dating back at least 315,000 years. The earliest modern humans made their appearance during this period, with the African archaeological record showing significant advances in cognitive and social complexity.

Thompson and Wright logged several field seasons of archaeological work in the region before a conversation with Ivory helped them make sense of the patterns they observed in their data. The researchers discovered that the regional archaeological record, its ecological changes, and the development of alluvial fans near Lake Malawi — an accumulation of sediment eroded from the region’s highland — dated to the same period of origin, suggesting that they were connected.

Landscape evolution Lake Malawi basin — Landscape evolution and ecology of the northern Lake Malawi basin.

Lake Malawi’s water levels have fluctuated drastically over the ages. During the lake’s driest periods, the last of which ended about 85,000 years ago, it diminished into two small, saline bodies of water. The lake recovered from these arid stretches and its levels have remained high ever since, according to the study.

The archaeological data were collected from more than 100 pits excavated across hundreds of kilometers of the alluvial fan that developed during this time of steady lake levels. The paleoenvironmental data are based on counts of pollen and charcoal that settled to the floor of the lakebed and were later recovered in a long sediment core drilled from a modified barge.

According to the researchers, the data revealed that a spike in charcoal accumulation occurred shortly before the flattening of the region’s species richness — the number of distinct species inhabiting it. Despite the consistently high lake levels, which imply greater stability in the ecosystem, the species richness went flat following the last arid period based on information from fossilized pollen sampled from the lakebed, the study found. This was unexpected because over previous climate cycles, rainy environments had produced forests that provide rich habitat for an abundance of species, Ivory explained.

Excavations yielded dense clusters of stone artifacts dating as far back as 92,000 years ago.

“The pollen that we see in this most recent period of stable climate is very different than before,” she said. “Specifically, trees that indicate dense, structurally complex forest canopies are no longer common and are replaced by pollen from plants that deal well with frequent fire and disturbance.”

The increase in archaeological sites after the last arid period, paired with the spike in charcoal and absence of forest, suggests that people were manipulating the ecosystem with fire, the researchers conclude. The scale of their environmental impact over the long term is something typically associated with farmers and herders, rather than hunter-gatherers. This suggests early ecological manipulation on par with modern people and may also explain why the archaeological record formed.

The burning paired with climate-driven changes created the conditions that allowed for preservation of millions of artifacts in the region, the researchers explained. “Dirt rolls downhill unless there is something to stop it,” Wright said. “Take the trees away, and when it rains, there is a lot of dirt moving downhill in this environment.”

Previous transitions from dry to wet conditions in the region didn’t yield a similar alluvial fan and were not preceded by the same charcoal spike, the researchers noted.

It’s not clear why people were burning the landscape, Thompson said. It’s possible that they were experimenting with controlled burns to produce mosaic habitats conducive to hunting and gathering, a behavior documented among hunter-gatherers. It could be that their fires burned out of control, or that there were simply a lot of people burning fuel in their environment that provided for warmth, cooking, or socialization, she explained.

“One way or another, it’s caused by human activity,” she said. “It shows early people, over a long period of time, took control over their environment rather than being controlled by it. They changed entire landscapes, and for better or for worse that relationship with our environments continues today.”

This work was funded by the Australian Research Council, the National Geographic-Waitt Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the University of Queensland Archaeological Field School, the Korean Research Foundation Global Research Network, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Emory University, and the Belmont Forum.

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