News and opinion about wildland fire
West Zone Fire Crew, Umpqua Crew 3, Stone Mountain Fire Protection LLC, Wyoming Hotshots
Fire crews and organizations have produced some excellent videos showing the highlights of their fire activities in 2020. We like to post them each year, and we used to be able to do it with one article, but so far this year we have found 28 — too many for one article. So this year we will do it intermittently over a two-week period.
Here is Volume 6 — the last in the series.
West Zone Fire Crew
Umpqua Crew 3
Stone Mountain Fire Protection LLC
Wyoming Hotshots
SDG&E, PG&E, and SCE release their plans for 2021 and 2022
Three of the largest power companies in California expect to spend a total of $15 billion over a two-year period, 2021 through 2022, to prevent wildfire ignitions. In state-required updates to their annual wildfire mitigation plans filed with California’s Public Utilities Commission, San Diego Gas and Electric states they will spend $1.3 billion, Pacific Gas and Electric $10.2 billion, and Southern California Edison $3.5 billion.
The power equipment of the three utilities have been responsible for numerous large, disastrous wildfires.
PG&E, for example, expects to make the following improvements to their systems in 2021:
The goal of PG&E’s Meteorology and Fire Science team is to advance operational meteorology and operational decision making to reduce wildfire risk. It is comprised of 15 scientists, most with advanced degrees in scientific fields with diverse backgrounds in operational meteorology, utility meteorology, outage prediction, fire science, data science, cloud computing, atmospheric modeling, application development and data systems development. The team is comprised of alumni from the San Jose State University Fire Weather Research Laboratory (https://www.fireweather.org/), former wildland firefighters, former National Weather Service forecasters, and Veterans of the Marine Corps and United States Air Force.
They observe fire fronts and burn scars during and shortly after fire moves across a landscape
For the past few decades, scientists have been using satellite- and airplane-based radar instruments to detect damage caused by wildfires and human-caused blazes. Radar instruments can observe by day or night and can see land through clouds and smoke, so they are helpful for observing fire fronts and burn scars during and shortly after fire moves across a landscape.
Landscape ecologist Naiara Pinto and colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are now taking a longer view. They are trying to decipher where and how well forests and scrublands are recovering in the years after a fire.
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments send out pulses of microwaves that bounce off of Earth’s surfaces. The reflected waves are detected and recorded by the instrument and can help map the shape of the land surface (topography) and the land cover—from cities to ice to forests. By comparing changes in the signals between two separate satellite or airplane overpasses, scientists can observe surface changes like land deformation after earthquakes, the extent of flooding, or the exposure of denuded or bare ground after large fires.
SAR instruments are carried on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites, while NASA currently deploys its Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) via research aircraft. NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization are planning to launch the NISAR satellite in 2022.
Mounted on the bottom of NASA research planes, UAVSAR has been flown over the same portions of Southern California several times since 2009. Pinto and JPL colleagues Latha Baskaran, Yunling Lou, and David Schimel analyzed that data and developed a mapping technique to show the different stages of removal and regrowth of vegetation (chapparal and forest).
The maps above are essentially mosaics of the observations across a decade. Radar signals bounce off burned, barren terrain differently than they reflect from unburned, brush-covered hillsides or from fresh growth. The colors indicate the relative amount of vegetation observed by different UAVSAR flights at different times. Yellow lines on the maps indicate the extent of several major fires: Station, Colby, San Gabriel (SG) Complex, La Tuna, and Bobcat.
“Overall, the colors are telling us that the Angeles National Forest contains a patchwork of plant communities at different stages of regeneration,” said Pinto, who is a science coordinator for UAVSAR. For instance, areas with more red had more vegetation in 2010 than they do now. Areas with more blue and green shading had more vegetation (regrowth) in recent years. Yellow indicates areas burned in 2020 that had a higher volume of vegetation in 2010 and 2017 (red+green) but lower volume in 2020 (blue).
The image above illustrates how those maps were assembled. Radar data were collected during UAVSAR flights in 2010, 2017, and 2020 over Angeles National Forest and other areas northeast of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.
The project has been supported by NASA’s Earth Applied Sciences Disasters program, which generates maps and other data products for institutional partners as they work to mitigate and recover from natural hazards and disasters. The SAR technique is still being tested and validated, but the intent is to monitor forest regrowth and fire scar change over time, which are important information for forest and fire managers working to manage risks.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using UAVSAR data and imagery courtesy of Anne Marie Peacock, Naiara Pinto, and Yunling Lou and NASA/Caltech UAVSAR. Story by Michael Carlowicz.
Midewin Engine 611, Tribal Fire Crew 42, Golden Eagles Hotshots, & Joe Demers
Fire crews and organizations have produced some excellent videos showing the highlights of their fire activities in 2020. We like to post them each year, and we used to be able to do it with one article, but so far this year we have found 28 — too many for one article. So this year we will do it intermittently over a two-week period.
Here is Volume 5. The last batch will be posted February 10, 2021.
Midewin Engine 611, Illinois
Tribal Fire Crew 42
Golden Eagles Hotshots
Joey Demers (looks like Canada)
We had intended to post a video by the Sawtooth Hotshots, but now we can’t find it.
Lane Lamoreaux tells his story
Last weekend at Big Sky, Montana a former hotshot and smokejumper gave a TEDx talk about his recipe for resilience in coming back from a life-threatening injury. In 2013 while paragliding in Southern California Lane Lamoreaux hit the ground very hard, shattering several bones and causing injuries that kept him in a coma for nine weeks. He is the subject of a documentary due out this fall.
His portion of the TEDx program begins at 1:20:00. The video should begin at that point.
After recovering from his injuries he worked at the National Interagency Fire Center making training videos, including some on the subject of Short Haul. He has also posted numerous videos on his personal account at YouTube.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Rick.
Wildfire Today has previously reported on the activation of an interagency Incident Management Team mobilized to assist in Washington state, assessing and modifying existing COVID plans to enable a broader distribution of vaccinations. They are handling three counties for the Southwest Washington Health Services — Clark, Cowlitz, and Skamania. At least 30 personnel were dispatched, 20 from the USFS, 3 DOI, and 9 from state and local governments.
Alex Robertson of the U.S. Forest Service has an update on the teams’ activities in Washington. Here is an excerpt from his report:
…Fourteen USDA Forest Service staff from the Pacific Northwest Incident Management Team 3 are bringing those skills to bear on the national vaccination effort. More are expected to deploy in the days to come.
In speaking with Incident Commander Randy Johnson, I learned this isn’t the team’s first go-round supporting COVID response.
“Last spring, Pacific Northwest Incident Management Team 3 supported COVID response in Spokane County and now the team is working with the three counties in southwest Washington to develop a coordinated, scalable approach to vaccine delivery,” said Johnson.
The team is helping scout and plan vaccination sites, verify transportation capacity and methods, and develop other critical logistics in support of the Washington Department of Health, and public health authorities in Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania Counties. Team members are helping track eligibility guidelines, vaccination capacity and availability, and striving to ensure equity in access.
Their efforts have already made people safer. Skamania County Community Health vaccinated more than 250 people just last week at an appointment-only, drive-through vaccination site. The team is sharing lessons learned and refining plans for additional vaccination sites for Cowlitz and Clark counties, while working out logistics for mobile delivery to hundreds of eligible seniors living in adult family homes.
It’s support like this that will help make the safe, effective and comprehensive vaccination campaign called for in the National Strategy for COVID (PDF, 24 MB) a reality. President Biden called for a whole-of-government response to end the pandemic, and the USDA Forest Service is delivering.
And this is just one example of how the USDA Forest Service and its national interagency partners can be called up to respond when needed.
“While our team responds to a lot of wildland fires, the Incident Command Structure is easily adapted to many types of incidents. The team has served during disasters like hurricanes, recovering space shuttle Columbia (PDF, 2 MB), and on 9/11,” said Johnson.
“Adaptability and flexibility are crucial for team success on these missions and this team is made up of skilled professionals from local, state and federal agencies who exhibit those qualities.”
I knew when I recently accepted a position as Fire and Aviation Director for the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Region, that we’d be facing new challenges this year. As we continue to recover from the 2020 wildfires and prepare for another fire season, we have the added challenge of keeping firefighters, employees and communities safe in the face of the pandemic.
I see this additional COVID support mission as a continuation of what wildland firefighters have always done—supporting the health and safety of the broader community.
I’m grateful that we have this opportunity to add another layer of support. Working closely with our partners, I look forward to seeing all that we can get done together.
Alex Robertson is the director of Fire and Aviation for the Pacific Northwest and Alaska regions in Portland, Oregon.
