Wildfire Today

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Wildfire Today

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Applications being accepted for Women In Fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 19 Comments on Applications being accepted for Women In Fire

Apply by August 21, 2022

BLM's all-female fire camp
Students at the all-female Women in Fire event in Oregon, October, 2019. Screenshot from BLM video.

From the US Forest Service:

The US Forest Service will be hosting the annual Women in Wildfire Training this fall in Arizona. This is a fast paced, six-day training where women from around the nation have an opportunity to participate in hands-on wildland fire training in a simulated fire assignment. Anyone is welcome to apply, no experience necessary. After the completion of the training, students become certified as FFT2 (Firefighter Type 2) and will be provided with information on how to apply in USAjobs if interested in working on a fire crew.

The camp will be held at the Pinedale Work Center on the Lakeside District of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in Arizona. The dates for the training are Sept 23rd-25th and Sept 30th-Oct 2nd. Participants must attend both timeframes. Time and travel are paid, and equipment is provided. Apply by August 21, 2022.

If you have any questions, contact:
Naomi Corkish (naomi.corkish@usda.gov, 928-333-6247) or
Matt Sigg (matthew.sigg@usda.gov, 316-617-9898).

Women In Fire, 2022

Save communities by thinning forests or hardening structures?

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 39 Comments on Save communities by thinning forests or hardening structures?
Moose Fire August 2, 2022 in Montana
The result of aerial ignition on the Moose Fire August 2, 2022 in Idaho. By Mike McMillan for the USFS.

Bloomberg Law has an interesting article by Bobby Magill about efforts to reduce the wildfire threat to homes. It discusses and compares forest thinning vs. hardening structures. Here are excerpts, but read the entire article.

Congress is spending billions to save communities from Western megafires by thinning large swaths of forests even as scientists say climate change-driven drought and heat are too extreme for it to work.

The money would be better spent thinning woods closest to homes and shoring up houses against embers raining down from firestorms, according to academics, former agency officials, and others who study wildfires.

“If our goal is to keep homes and communities from burning, the experts are telling us to focus from the home outwards. First, harden the home so it is less likely to ignite,” said Beverly Law, an emeritus professor of forestry at Oregon State University.

Megafires are sustained by drought and heat, and “no amount of thinning treatment will prevent such fires from occurring,” she said.

[…]

No Scientific Consensus
As the federal government focuses on forest thinning, no scientific consensus exists that removing vegetation, especially at a landscape-scale, will save communities in the paths of firestorms amid the West’s historic 23-year drought.

The science is clear that “there isn’t a great connection between home loss and these fuel treatments,” though they sometimes help firefighters gain a foothold on some fires, Cheng said.

Randy Moore, the Forest Service chief, said the agency is confident that as homes are built deeper and deeper into the woods, its research shows that removing “overstocked” trees is the best way to protect them.

“We know where we do nothing, or where we do a little, we’re seeing the evidence out on the landscape,” Moore said, referring to recent megafires. “We feel compelled to do something.”

Researchers find that nearly half of lightning down strikes in California occur with little or no rain

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , 4 Comments on Researchers find that nearly half of lightning down strikes in California occur with little or no rain

Researchers studied the climatology of dry lightning in California

Dry Lightning, California
(B) Total number of dry lightning flashes across three elevation zones (<1000 m, 1000–2000 m, >2000 m) within the domain for each month between 1987–2020. Text indicates the area of each elevation zone, and inset map shows the geographic distribution of the elevation zones and major mountain ranges. (D) The three elevation zones for each month (bars). Dashed lines in (D) indicate the dry lightning fraction averaged across all months for each zone. Blue dashes in (D) represent the dry lightning fraction computed from all months and elevation zones. (From the paper)

A group of six researchers who studied the occurrence and characteristics of cloud to ground lightning in Central and Northern California found that nearly half, 46 percent, was dry, accompanied by less than 0.1 inch of precipitation.

Of course dry lightning is the bane of land managers and is much more likely to ignite a wildfire than a wet thunderstorm. And on the occasions when there are thousands of down strikes, it can overwhelm the capacity to suppress what can be hundreds of fires.

The six scientists used daily gridded lightning and precipitation observations (1987–2020) in combination with atmospheric reanalyses, to characterize the climatology of dry lightning and the associated meteorological conditions during the warm season (May–October) when wildfire risk is highest.

The paper the group produced is available as open source: “Meteorological and geographical factors associated with dry lightning in central and northern California.”

Daniel Swain, a prolific user of Twitter, used the platform today to highlight some of the group’s findings. In the tweet below, click on “read reply” to see more discussion and illustrations.

The six researchers who participated in the project were Dmitri A. Kalashnikov, John T. Abatzoglou, Nicholas J. Nauslar, Daniel L. Swain, Danielle Touma, and Deepti Singh.

Book about California’s female inmate firefighters

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

“Breathing Fire” by Jaime Lowe

Injured inmate hoist helicopter
Firefighter Shawna Lynn Jones was airlifted after being injured in Malibu on Feb. 25, 2016. (Credit: KTLA)

The third California state inmate to die since 1943 while incarcerated and fighting a wildland fire was a woman. In the early hours of the morning on February 25, 2016 while fighting the Mulhollan Fire near Malibu as part of a hand crew, Shawna Lynn Jones, 22, was struck by a boulder that rolled down a hill. She was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center where she was treated for major head injuries. Ms. Jones was removed from life support after her organs were donated, in keeping with her family’s wishes.

This tragedy is one of the stories covered in a book by Jaime Lowe about California’s female inmate firefighters, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.”

Here is an excerpt from a review by Erin Berger in Outside Magazine.

But Lowe makes a clear distinction between professional firefighting in the free world and the carceral system’s employment of inmates as firefighters. “All the women I spoke with could see the benefits of the firefighting program, but most bristled at the idea that they had volunteered,” Lowe writes, citing the litany of reasons an inmate would consider such a dangerous job more desirable than the conditions in prison, which include sexual assault, neglect for the sick or mentally ill, and poor nutrition. “‘Volunteer’ is a relative term for the incarcerated.”

Breathing Fire
Macmillan

Cresson Volunteer Fire Department’s engine burned over in brush fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 1 Comment on Cresson Volunteer Fire Department’s engine burned over in brush fire

Southwest of Fort Worth, Texas

Cresson Volunteer FD engine burned over
Photo by Cresson Volunteer FD, August 3, 2022.

From the Cresson Volunteer Fire Department, August 3, 2022

“This afternoon we sent 3 trucks to help on a wildfire reportedly started by welding north of Tolar. While working with a group of other trucks in a clear area extinguishing spot fires one of our trucks stalled and lost mobility. Seeing that the fire was approaching, our crew left the truck on foot and retreated to a safe area. Another truck picked them up and our firefighters were evaluated by EMS. One of our firefighters did inhale some smoke and had burns on a small portion of his face and arms. He was flown to Parkland, and his evaluation is excellent. We don’t know yet, but he may be released without even spending the night. These are dangerous fires for all of us, and our guys’ training and decision making kept a bad incident from getting worse. UPDATE: just received confirmation that our firefighter is being released and heading home from the hospital.”

More information

The Staging Area, August 5, 2022

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 34 Comments on The Staging Area, August 5, 2022
Smoke from Oak Fire
Smoke from Oak Fire, seen from Mariposa Co. Fairgrounds, July 23, 2022. Photo, Daniel R. Patterson, USFS.

This weekend we are continuing an occasional weekend feature we started a few weeks ago. This post can serve as the beginning of an open thread where our readers can talk about issues that we have, or have not, gotten into yet. This is literally an off-topic thread. You have the floor.

The usual rules about commenting apply. And remember, no personal attacks or politics, please.

Let’s enjoy a wide-ranging conversation!

(Oh, and send us pics  of staging areas — date, location, and photographer’s name would be nice.)