The Las Conchas fire, taken at 1:44 p.m. June 26, 2011, approximately 45 minutes after it started. Photo: Michael Grady
A jury found two power companies were mostly liable for starting the 2011 Las Conchas Fire northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico that burned 63 structures and 156,000 acres.
Two companies and the U.S. Forest Service share the responsibility for the fire that began when an aspen tree fell into a power line.
Below is an excerpt from an AP article:
Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative operated and maintained the power lines. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Inc. provides the cooperative with electricity.
Jurors in Sandoval County District Court found the cooperative was 75 percent negligent for the wildfire, Tri-State 20 percent and the U.S. Forest Service 5 percent.
The amount of monetary damages will be determined at a later trial.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office has released dash cam video shot during the early hours of the Valley Fire. Deputies struggled while the fire was spreading very rapidly to notify and evacuate residents. Four homeowners were killed and four CAL FIRE firefighters were entrapped and seriously burned in the fire that burned 76,000 acres and 1,200 homes in three counties 62 miles north of San Francisco.
At one point in the video you see deputies Rob Rumfelt and Kalen Brockwalder race toward a burning car, but had to turn back due to the intensity of the flames.
The three-year drought in the western United States and especially in California became more obvious this year as wildfires were influenced by low moisture in live vegetation, and in some areas once-healthy trees began to show drought-induced stress.
The map above illustrates how much precipitation is needed over a three-month period to end or ameliorate the current drought. Most of northern California will need from 6 to 12 inches according to NOAA.
This [map] only tells you how much precipitation a location needs to get the Palmer Hydrological Drought Index (PHDI) to a certain value based on the model’s equations. It does not tell you how much precipitation is needed to refill a reservoir, restore groundwater to normal, or bring an ecosystem back to normality. It also does not incorporate snowpack into its calculations, and mountain snowpack is a crucial part of hydrology in the U.S. West.
The question of IF there will be a strong El Niño weather pattern in the contiguous United States this winter is now settled. NOAA reports that there is a 95 percent probability that El Niño will continue through the 2015-2016 Northern Hemisphere winter. In an indication of the strength to expect, the June-August average of sea surface temperatures in the Niño3.4 region was 1.22° C above normal. This is the third-highest June-August value since records started in 1950.
El Niño isn’t a storm that will hit a specific area at a specific time. Instead, the warmer tropical Pacific waters cause changes to the global atmospheric circulation, resulting in a wide range of changes to global weather.
The map above is a composite of how precipitation varied from average during the strong El Niños of 1957–1958, 1965–1966, 1972–1973, 1982–1983, 1991–1992, and 1997–1998. There is a large variability in those six events that makes it difficult to predict the effects at any specific location. The map below is a composite of temperatures for the same periods. Again there is much variability, and you will notice that it is very different from the actual forecast, farther down, for this winter.
The impacts of El Niño are typically largest in the U.S. during the cool months from October through May. During the winter season, the southern half of the country — from California to the Southern Plains, as well as along the East Coast — typically receives above-average precipitation. Below-average temperatures also often accompany this above-average precipitation in these regions. Across the northern half of the country, the winter season tends to be warmer and drier than average, particularly in the Northwest, Northern Plains, and Ohio Valley.
Below are NOAA’s outlooks for temperature and precipitation for December 2015 through February 2016.
Air Attack’s photo of the Yarnell Hill Fire at 7:24 p.m. on June 29, 2013, after it had been burning for 26 hours. The next day, June 30, the fire intensity increased dramatically, trapping and killing 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
The S-336 training course, Tactical Decision Making in Wildland Fire, has been removed from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group curriculum. Mark Jones, chair of the Operations and Training Committee, signed a document on October 14, 2015 discarding the course.
S-336 is no longer required for any position in the interagency Wildland Fire Qualification System Guide (PMS 310-1), however the U.S. Forest Service requires it for their Strike Team Leaders.
The Committee’s argument for eliminating Tactical Decision Making was that other courses have scenario-driven training, including S-230 (Crew Boss), S-231(Engine Boss), S-236 (Heavy Equipment Boss), S-330 (Strike Team Leader), and S-339 (Division/Group Supervisor).
S-336 was also removed in 1993 by the NWCG, citing tactical training that was included in S-230 and S-330. By 1999 it was reinstated because “incident management personnel and trainers in incident management believed that S-336 was a valuable training tool”.
The original name of the course was Fire Suppression Tactics but in 2004 it was changed to Tactical Decision Making in Wildland Fire.
