Hunter Bassler, Author at Wildfire Today

August ‘pyrotornado’ in Canada validated by researchers

Hunter BasslerDecember 26, 2023Fire behaviorCarr Fire, pyrocumulus, pyrotornado

A video that claimed to show a rarely-seen wildfire phenomenon went viral in August. Now, researchers have confirmed its legitimacy.

An “extensive investigation” led by researchers at Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project in Ontario started after the video of a vortex above British Columbia’s Gun Lake was shared by numerous news outlets after it was recorded on August 18.

“The Northern Tornadoes Project has been investigating this event since that time — very carefully, given this was potentially the first fire-generated tornado that we have recorded,” researchers said.

Researchers first confirmed the location and date of the video, then had to determine whether the vortex shown in the video met the definition of a tornado. The project was able to determine the tornado’s validity through multiple visual indications from the recording, including the presence of a spray vortex at the base of the tornado, how the vortex formed and the position of the vortex over the fire, all of which matched the scientific research related to fire-generated tornadoes.

“Though the terminology in this area of science is still developing, it should be pointed out that this intense vortex was not a brief, fire-filled ‘fire whirl‘ but an actual tornado that is sometimes referred to as a pyrotornado,” the researchers said. “This is the first such fire-generated tornado recorded by [the Northern Tornadoes Project], and appears to be the most thoroughly documented fire-generated tornado so far in Canada.”

The researchers confirmed that, yes, the event is classified as a tornado. The full extent of the damage from the tornado isn’t yet known, but the project says evidence is trickling in slowly.

The pyrotornado isn’t the only one that’s been thoroughly studied. The “world’s first wildfire tornado” was captured on video in 2003 during a wildfire outside of Canberra, Australia. The fire destroyed 500 homes and killed four people. The damage was worsened when the pyrotornado emerged.

“The Canberra fire tornado of 2003 was rated an EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with horizontal winds of 160 miles per hour, roughly equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane,” an article from Smithsonian Magazine reads. “As the first documented example of its kind, it was a milestone — another harbinger of 21st-century fire.”

A similar event was recorded during the 2018 Carr Fire in Redding, California, dubbed “the most destructive fire in National Park System history.” The fire destroyed 1,614 structures, killed seven people, and burned 229,651 acres. The fire also has a place in history for the pyrotornado it generated, which has since helped forecasters’ and scientists’ ability to identify future fire-generated tornadoes. NOAA researchers studied the pyrotornado, which had many similarities to the Gun Lake tornado.

“A key factor in the vortex formation was the development of a fire-generated ice-topped cloud (i.e., a pyrocumulonimbus), which reached as high as 12 km aloft,” NOAA said. “These observations will help forecasters and scientists identify, and potentially warn for, future destructive fire-generated vortices.”

A video that claimed to show a rarely-seen wildfire phenomenon went viral in August. Now, researchers have confirmed its legitimacy.

Burning Alaskan permafrost increasing methane emissions

Hunter BasslerDecember 22, 2023ResearchAlaska, methane, tundra

The flames have died out on Alaska’s largest river delta, but emissions are still seeping out of the tundra’s ground.

A recent NASA study found that methane “hot spots” in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta are more likely to be found where wildfires burned into the tundra. The greenhouse gas reportedly originates from decomposing carbon stored in the tundra’s permafrost for thousands of years.

“We find that [methane] hotspots are roughly 29 percent more likely on average in tundra that burned within the last 50 years compared with unburned areas, and that this effect is nearly tripled along burn scar perimeters that are delineated by surface water features,” the researchers said. “Our results indicate that the changes following tundra fire favor the complex environmental conditions needed to generate emission hotspots.”

The correlation also nearly tripled in areas where fires burned to the edge of a lake, stream, or other body of standing water, according to NASA. The highest ratio of methane hot spots occurred in recently burned wetlands. Researchers detected roughly 2 million hot spots across 11,583 square miles. The team believes more hot spots could soon emerge.

“By some projections, the fire risk in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta could quadruple by the end of the century due to warming conditions and increased lightning storms – the leading cause of tundra fires,” they said.

Alaska had two of its largest tundra fires ever in 2022. The East Fork Fire ignited on May 31 after a lightning strike, and burned more than 150,000 acres along the Yukon River. The Apoon Pass Fire, the second largest, burned 84,130 acres.

Previous research found that the majority of yearly methane emissions from Alaska’s tundra occur during the cold season between September and May, indicating that total emissions are sensitive to soil climate and snow depth.

Hackberry Fire burning near Prescott

Hunter BasslerDecember 18, 2023WildfireArizona, hackberry

Fire crews are fighting the Hackberry Fire, burning seven miles west of Prescott, Arizona since Monday morning, according to the Arizona Emergency Information Network.

The fire had burned 30 acres as of Monday afternoon, Prescott NF firefighters said.

Updates:

Fire crews report there are no values at risk or threatened.
The cause of the fire is unknown and under investigation.

How many acres has it burned?
The Hackberry Fire has burned 30 acres and is zero percent contained. Infrared imaging has not yet been done to get an accurate estimate of acres burned. Recreationists should avoid camping, biking, and hiking near the fires and use caution while driving the roads as firefighters will be traveling to and from the fire.

Are there any evacuations?
There are no evacuations yet announced, nor any communities warned to prepare for evacuation.

What roads or highways have been closed?
Authorities have not announced any road closures.

Wildfire Go-Kit:
Residents in wildfire-prone areas are urged to have an emergency supplies kit to bring with them if they are evacuated from their homes. An emergency supply kit, a “go bag,” should be put together long before a wildfire or other disaster occurs. Make sure to keep it easily accessible so you can take it with you when you have to evacuate.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommends that residents store emergency supplies in a plastic tub, small suitcase, trash can, backpack, or other container. Residents should make sure they have the necessities, such as three gallons of water per person and a three-day supply of ready-to-eat food, the NFPA said. A first aid kit, prescription medications, contact lenses, and non-prescription drugs should also be taken into account.

Copies of important family documents, including insurance policies, identification, bank account records, and emergency contact numbers should also be put into a waterproof portable container in your kit.

The NFPA lists other items that would help in a disaster, including:

Sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person
Battery-powered or hand-cranked radio and a NOAA weather radio to receive up-to-date information
Dust mask or cotton T-shirt to filter air
Matches in a waterproof container
Complete change of clothing including long pants, long-sleeve shirts, and sturdy shoes stored in a waterproof container
Signal flare

The entire NFPA checklist of supplies can be found here.

near a disaster

Grassfires destroy far more homes than forest fires

Hunter BasslerDecember 18, 2023Research, Uncategorizedbrushfire, grassfire, homes destroyed2 Comments

A devastating series of wildfires that swept over forests in Idaho, Montana, and Washington more than a century ago — the Big Burn of 1910 — would forever change the nation’s perception of fire in forests. The lessons learned from that tragedy, however, may have been a bit misguided, according to new research.

Firefighters had been putting out fires for months in 1910 throughout the Western states. They’d finally begun to get ahead during the week of August 19, even beginning to dismiss some firefighters, according to the Forest History Society.

But then all hell broke loose. Hurricane-force winds roared across the states, turning numerous smoldering embers into firestorms.

“A forester wrote of flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air, fanned by a tornadic wind so violent that the flames flattened out ahead, swooping to earth in great darting curves, truly a veritable red demon from hell,” according to a summary document by the USFS.

What became known as the “Big Blowup of 1910” is largely remembered for killing 86 people (78 of whom were firefighters), burning 3 million acres, and completely destroying eight towns.

Wallace, Idaho -- the aftermath — Wallace, Idaho — the aftermath

The fire burned its way into the American conscious, one of the first widely reported wildfire tragedies in the nation’s budding national news system.

Three future Forest Service chiefs were directly involved in the Big Blowup, including W.B.Greeley, Henry Graves, and Ferdinand Silcox, and their experience would go on to shape decades of policy around aggressive fire suppression in U.S. forests. Not only has research shown aggressive suppression to be an ill-advised effort, but the heightened focus on fires in the nation’s forests may have also been misguided.

New research found rising wildfire risk for houses across the United States, with the number of homes within wildfire perimeters doubling since the 1990s, caused by both housing growth and more burned areas. Researchers also got a surprising finding from their study: grassland and shrubland fires destroyed far more houses than those lost to forest fires.

“This pattern was most pronounced in the Western U.S., which encompassed 69 percent of all the buildings destroyed by wildfires,” the researchers wrote. “There, 79.5 percent of all destroyed buildings were lost in grassland and shrubland fires. In the East, by contrast, 82.1 percent of destroyed buildings were lost in forest fires. In the West, even though forests had a high destruction rate (21.3 percent), only 2,367 buildings were destroyed by forest fires compared with 9,402 in grassland and shrubland fires.”

The researchers noted multiple potential reasons for the heightened number of homes destroyed by grassland and shrubland wildfires compared with forest wildfires, including the sheer acreage of grasslands and shrublands throughout the country. From 1990 to 2020, grassland and shrubland accounted for 64 percent of the total area burned by wildfires at ~91 million acres, while forests made up only 27 percent of burned areas at ~34 million acres.

Another reason is the difference in vegetation in the two environments. Wildfire management across grassland and shrublands requires frequent application of multiple types of risk-management strategies, including prescribed burning and fuel thinning, compared with forests — because of the quick recovery of fuel loads in grassland areas. The risk-management strategies, however, may not be advisable in all grasslands and shrublands, specifically those where fire-prone invasive species have replaced native vegetation.

In the West, 79.5 percent of all destroyed buildings were lost in grassland and shrubland fires.

Despite more homes being destroyed by grassland and shrubland wildfires, homes near forest wildfires reportedly have an above-average chance of being destroyed.

“Of the 151,725 buildings … that were exposed to wildfires from 2000 to 2013, 11.3 percent were destroyed,” researchers said. “However, buildings in evergreen and in mixed forests were almost twice as likely to be destroyed (20.1 and 22.9 percent, respectively). By contrast, the destruction rate for shrublands was similar to the average (12.7 percent), and rates for grasslands and deciduous forests were considerably lower (8.0 and 3.3 percent, respectively).”

Researchers believe this is the case partly because of forest wildfires’ higher intensity, but also couldn’t rule out the difference in the architecture of homes built in forests compared with homes built in grasslands and shrublands.

The study concluded by noting that stricter construction standards and land-use planning, specifically avoiding building in areas prone to fire, would help the Forest Service meet its goal of limiting wildfire risk for newly developed housing.

France’s ‘Zombie Fire’ still alive after 1½ years

Hunter BasslerDecember 15, 2023December 15, 2023Fire behaviorpeat fire, zombie fire

The soil under the Hostens Forest in Gironde, France is burning. Not only have numerous rains not been enough to snuff out the flame, but time itself seems to have had no effect.

Four major wildfires over the summer of 2022, totaling around 69,000 acres between July and August, caused the evacuation of 46,000 locals. Authorities suspect human involvement and an investigation has been launched.

Satellite images showing the impact of the wildfire in Gironde between 12 and 17 July 2022 — Satellite images show the impact of the wildfire in Gironde in July 2022. Click for more.

Ever since, the fire has traveled from the surface to underground; it’s still burning despite weeks of rainfall. The underground fuel was partially created by an old lignite (brown coal) mine that produced electricity for the region until it shut down in 1964. After he heard it was partly the reason the fire was still burning, a reader of the Sud Ouest daily newspaper shared images of a field trip he’d taken to the mine as a child.

The continuous fire’s other cause, though, is the land itself. The Landes forest region, where the fires are burning, used to be an extensive marshland filled with moors. That changed in the early 1800s when the area’s sand dunes were stabilized by humans so they could set up plantations and plant a vast pine forest for timber purposes.

The drained, dried-out peatland is as perfect a fuel as you could find for a wildfire. Making matters worse, the artificial forest standing on top of the peat has dried out as well — a result of severe ongoing drought. The combination has forced French authorities to essentially gut the area of all vegetation until all fires are out.

“We are constantly on guard,” said Pascale Got, who handles environmental issues for the Gironde département, according to The Local. “When vegetation starts to grow again, we cut it down. Given the amount that we have cut down so far, I don’t think there will be a resumption of wildfires, unless there is an exceptional drought.”

This kind of continuous fire, or “zombie fire,” isn’t unheard of. A similar fire in Louisiana’s Bayou Sauvage Urban National Wildlife Refuge burned for two months before it was extinguished on December 4. The continual burning plagued the area with “noxious” smoke.

Overwintering fires, wildfires that continue to burn deep in a fuelbed until weather favors flaming behavior and firespread, have also occurred with increased frequency in North America’s boreal forests. Research published in 2021 found that flare-ups from these overwintering fires could partially be predicted by monitoring edges of fire perimeters from the preceding year.

Officials worry that another period of severe drought could start new fires; according to the Connexion, Gironde officials plan to reforest the area in France once the fires have been completely resolved.

Wildfire smoke toxicity worsened by heavy metals in soil, flame intensity

Hunter BasslerDecember 12, 2023December 13, 2023Researchchromium 6, heavy metals, smoke

The job of wildland firefighters is grueling; long treks into the wild and countless hours of manual labor on the job take their toll. Because of this, gear is often reserved for the bare essentials like flame-resistant clothes, hard hats, and tools to cut a fireline.

Urban firefighters, on the other hand, are outfitted like armored tanks with gear that’s nearly triple the weight of what the wildland firefighter carries. The most obvious visual difference in their gear is a breathing apparatus, meant to protect structural firefighters from smoke. Despite this, cancer remains the largest killer of urban firefighters, in part because of the synthetic materials that burn inside buildings and release toxic chemicals into the air.

A self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) is a device worn to provide an autonomous supply of breathable gas in an atmosphere unsafe for breathing — which structural firefighters often encounter.

Development of a wildland fire respirator. Two versions are being tested, with the filter being carried on the chest hip. Department of Homeland Security photo.

A breathing apparatus or mask hasn’t historically been a staple of wildland firefighters’ gear, though some have been in testing for years. The added heavy carry capacity is one reason, along with the assumed lack of toxic chemical inhalation, since the fire’s burning in a natural area free from synthetic materials.

That assumption isn’t true, according to new research from Stanford University. Wildfire can actually create cancer-causing toxic heavy metals depending on where they burn and the severity of the flames.

“Soil-and plant-borne chromium is of particular concern,” the research team told WildfireToday. “Altered by fire, chromium is transformed into its toxic hexavalent state. We show that fire severity, geologic substrate, and ecosystem type influence landscape-scale production of hexavalent chromium in particulates during recent wildfires.”

The Stanford team researched soil and ash gathered from the 2019 Kincade Fire and the 2020 Hennessey Fire within the LNU Lightning Complex for their study. At the burn scars, the team measured the levels of chromium 6, which is known by most as the toxic chemical from the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, and they found dangerous levels of it in certain areas of the fire.

The chemical was present in heightened amounts where the soil had a greater concentration of metals from the area’s geology and had also been severely burned. Areas that weren’t on metal-rich geologies, or that had burned at a low severity, had either non-detectable chromium 6 levels or very low levels not of concern.

“Up until now, for wildfires at least, we’ve worried a lot about the fine particulate exposure … what we’ve been blind to is that those ultra-fine particles can differ in composition,” researcher Scott Fendorf said. “Even in wildfires that are completely removed from any dwellings, with certain geologies and certain vegetation types which are pretty common, we can see that the particles have these toxic metals in them.”

The team’s findings may not only help define the health risks wildland firefighters face in certain wildfires, but may also help in understanding what risks nearby populations may experience when inhaling air downwind of wildfires. In areas that experienced dry post-fire weather, chromium 6 was found to last on the soil’s surface in wind-dispersible particulates for up to a year after the fire was extinguished.

Researcher Alandra Marie Lopez hopes to further her research for this study and use the findings to examine what levels of chromium 6, if any, are found on landscapes post-prescribed burning. Additionally, the team hopes to use the research to create a risk analysis map to determine which areas and geologies after severe burns pose the greatest risk to human health.

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