Wildfire Today

More than 40 insurance companies sue government over fire that burned into Gatlinburg

Bill GabbertDecember 7, 2019March 18, 2021WildfireChimney 2 Fire, Gatlinburg, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee4 Comments

Chimney Tops 2 Fire Gatlinburg tennessee — Chimney Tops 2 Fire at 9:37 p.m. November 28, 2016 after it burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Photo credit: Sevierville Police Department.

More than 40 insurance companies are suing the federal government for $450 million over how the fire that burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 2016 was handled, the Knox News is reporting.

Five days after it started in Great Smoky Mountains National Park on November 23 the Chimney Tops 2 Fire spread into the eastern Tennessee city killing 14 people, forcing 14,000 to evacuate, destroying or damaging 2,400 structures, and blackening 17,000 acres.

The strategy used to manage the fire was controversial in that very little direct action was taken to suppress the fire during those first five days until a predicted wind event caused it to spread very rapidly out of the park and into the city.

Below is an excerpt from an article at the Knox News:

The lawsuits blame the devastation on National Park Service officials. Fire managers violated their own policies, the complaints state, when they opted to let the blaze burn amid prolonged drought and forecasted high winds, then failed to monitor it or warn residents of the danger it posed.

The lawsuits single out Greg Salansky, the park’s fire management officer who first spotted smoke coming from the park’s Chimney Tops peaks on Nov. 23, 2016. Salansky didn’t attack the roughly acre-sized fire directly, didn’t dig containment lines initially and waited four days to order water drops by airplane and helicopter.

Earlier drops, the complaints read, could have easily extinguished the fire when it spanned just an acre and a half.

Instead, Salansky opted to try to contain the fire inside a 410-acre box in hopes of coming rain. He briefed higher-ups at the park, according to the complaints, but made no significant progress in containing the fire. It didn’t help that most of the fire crew’s staff was on vacation due to the holiday. No one called them in.

Chimney Tops 2 Fire August 27, 2016 — Chimney Tops 2 Fire November 27, 2016. Photo by Brett Bevill.

The National Park Service assembled an eight-person team to review the management of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire. Participants represented the NPS, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Boone Fire Department in North Carolina, plus a Technical Writer-Editor. It was led by Joe Stutler, of the USFS, who is qualified as a Type 1 Incident Commander and Area Commander, positions at the pinnacle of the incident management structure.

Gatlinburg fire report Joe Stutler — On August 31, 2017 Joe Stutler presented information from the report about the Chimney Tops 2 Fire that burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

In a press conference when the report was released, Mr. Stutler began by saying the report was intended to not place blame on anyone, and would “avoid should have, could have, and would have, statements that frankly inhibit sensemaking and also inhibit continuing to learn from the event.”

Describing the actions taken or not taken on the fire, he said, “the review team found no evidence of negligence of anyone at the park. They did the very best they could when it came to their duty. They did the very best they could based on what was loaded in their hard drive”, he said as he pointed to his head. “Never in the history of this park or even in the surrounding area”, Mr. Stutler said, “had anyone seen the combination of severe drought, fire on the landscape, and an extreme wind event” occurring at the same time.

Combined with a wildland/urban interface, it was the “perfect storm”, he explained. The review team concluded that the fire management officials did not see the potential for the low-frequency, high-risk event.

The 116-page report had a brief summary of its findings:

“The review team concluded that a lack of wildland fire preparedness during a period of drought conditions favorable to wildfires overwhelmed National Park Service response to the CT2 fire. Though the review team concluded that the firefighting decisions made by the personnel involved were commensurate within their knowledge and experience in fighting wildland fires in the region, this report recommends enhanced preparedness and fire planning based on fire-conditions assessments, and adherence to the National Park Service wildland fire program and policies. These recommendations will likely enhance the capability of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to respond to a wildfire event with similar or greater fire weather conditions in the future.”

The report made recommendations, including:

Revise the park’s fire management plan to reflect more aggressive strategies and tactics during extreme fire weather conditions.
Expand communications capacity to allow interoperability with responders outside the federal system.
The Fire Management Officer should be supervised by a single individual, not two.
Since no Red Flag Warnings were issued around the time of the fire, evaluate current Red Flag Warning and advisory criteria to reflect conditions experienced during the 2016 fire season.
The National Park Service leadership should embrace and institute change to create wildland fire management organizations that have the capacity and resilience to meet the realities of this “new normal” fire behavior.
Institute formal fire management officer and agency administrator mentoring and/or development programs.

(The article was edited on December 7, 2019 to show that Joe Stutler is currently working for the U.S. Forest Service.)

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Bob. Typos or errors, report them HERE.

California bans insurers from dropping policies in wildfire areas

Bill GabbertDecember 6, 2019December 6, 2019UncategorizedCalifornia, defensible space, fire codes, FireWise, home ignition zone, Insurance3 Comments

It will apply for one year after the Governor declared a state of emergency

Glen Cove Fire south of south of Vallejo, California, northeast of the I-80 Carquinez Bridge, October 27, 2019. Photo by @arrowstewtoe.

The California Department of Insurance is invoking a law passed in 2018 that bans insurance companies from dropping or refusing to renew homeowners policies in zip codes within or adjacent to the perimeters of recent fires. This will apply for one year after the Governor declared a state of emergency in October, 2018 and will affect at least 800,000 homes in wildfire disaster areas in Northern and Southern California. The action by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is the result of Senate Bill 824 that he authored last year while serving as state senator.

In his announcement about the localized ban, the Commissioner went a step further and called on insurance companies to voluntarily cease all non-renewals related to wildfire risk statewide until December 5, 2020.

Many homeowners in California are finding that the premiums on their policies have doubled or tripled in the last two years, and insurance companies in some cases are canceling or refusing to renew policies on residences in areas where wildfires have occurred. California’s property insurers are beginning to retreat from areas they identify as having higher wildfire risk.

Local governments are concerned that this trend could disrupt local real estate markets and cause property values to decline, reducing tax revenue available for vital services to residents such as fire protection, community fire mitigation, law enforcement, road repairs, and hospitals.

The California Department of Insurance has identified some of the zip codes affected by the temporary ban on dropping or refusing to renew homeowners policies. The following fires with the affected zip codes are listed: Saddleridge, Eagle, Kincade, Tick, Getty, Hill, and Maria.

CAL FIRE has not yet provided the fire perimeter maps for the Water, 46, Hillside, Easy, Sky, and Glen Cove Fires, therefore the zip codes near these fires is not yet available.

Opinion: Could this be a tipping point?

I have wondered for years when the insurance companies were going to drastically raise their rates or refuse to issue policies in wildfire-prone areas. I figured that when it occurred it could be a tipping point that could lead to broad positive actions affecting the resiliency of communities at risk from wildfires. Either that, or those areas could experience significant outward migration of residents, causing economic disruption.

Fire-prone communities, if they are going to survive over the long term, have to learn to live with fire. Sticking their heads in the sand and thinking fires can’t happen to them is not recognizing reality.

Earlier this year I wrote an article about “Five things that need to be done to protect fire-prone communities”. In areas where they are adopted insurance companies could recognize that homes would be less likely burn in a wildfire and adjust their rates accordingly.

Here are the broad areas that need to be considered:

Home spacing and lot size
Envelope of the structure itself
Home ignition zone
Community infrastructure and planning
Wildland-urban interface

The only effective way to ensure that residents understand and implement these five tasks is to make them mandatory by establishing Fire Codes at the local and state levels.

U.S. and Canada send firefighters to Australia

Bill GabbertDecember 5, 2019UncategorizedAustralia, Canada, New South Wales46 Comments

A total of 42 firefighters from North America will be assisting with the suppression of bushfires

Canadian fire management personnel Australia — 21 Canadian fire management personnel received a warm welcome at the Sydney airport December 5 from @NSWRFS, @AFACnews, and @canadadownunder. These personnel from Parks, ON, MB, SK, AB & BC, are expected to return to Canada in early January. CIFFC photo.

Australia has just moved into their summer, but firefighters in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria have been dealing with exceptionally large numbers of massive bushfires for weeks.

Canada and the United States are each sending 21 firefighters down under to assist their Australian brothers and sisters.

The U.S. personnel will be representing the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service. The employees are coming from Alaska, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, California, Oregon, Hawaii, and Virginia.

The U.S. firefighters departed from the San Francisco International
Airport on Thursday, December 5. The Canadians arrived in Sydney December 5.

This is the first time Canadian firefighters have been deployed to Australia under the Exchange of Wildland Fire Management Resources Agreement.

The last fire assistance between the U.S and Australia was in August of 2018 when 138 Australian and New Zealand wildfire management personnel worked in the U.S. for almost 30 days to assist with wildfire suppression efforts in Northern California and the Northwest. The personnel from the Southern Hemisphere filled critical needs during the peak of the western fire season for mid-level fireline management, helicopter operations, and structure protection.

The last time the U.S sent firefighters to Australia was in 2010.

Technology may detect some power line faults before they ignite wildfires

Bill GabbertDecember 4, 2019Uncategorizedpower line, Texas

A new system being tested seeks to provide continuous situational awareness of the condition of each circuit

Vegetation power line cause faults fires electrically — Vegetation can cause faults and fires electrically. Distribution Fault Anticipation can detect this type of vegetation fault before the dangerous situation escalates. (Texas A&M Engineering)

Technology recently developed can shut off the power to a broken overhead electrical line before it hits the ground, possibly avoiding the ignition of a disastrous wildfire. But not all of the numerous large fires started by power lines in California were caused by broken conductors. Often they originate from failing hardware, two wires blown by the wind briefly touching, or a tree limb coming in contact with a line. These situations do not always start a fire when they first occur, but over time can become more serious problems.

A team of Texas A&M researchers has developed a new technology that helps electrical providers find the cause of outages, and anticipate and predict some failures before outages occur. A few utility companies in Texas started using it a few years ago and tests in California by PG&E and Southern California Edison have just begun.

From Texas A&M:

When your power goes out, you probably assume that your utility provider has a monitoring system quickly telling them exactly where the problem is. After all, this is the era of smart technology and big data.

But the electric grid wasn’t designed or built in this era. Utility companies may know if there is an outage, but they likely don’t know exactly where or what the problem is until crews inspect it and find the problem. Utility providers are essentially blind to developing problems in the grid other than whether the power is on or off.

Not only is their ability to assess a current outage limited, they also have no way of identifying a problem that may not actually be causing an outage or anticipating where a problem may occur in the future. For example, a failing device could be sparking, creating a dangerous situation that nobody is aware of for days or weeks before it completely fails and causes an outage.

But, not anymore.

Applying concepts of pattern recognition and advanced signal processing to more than a decade of data, a team of Texas A&M University researchers has developed a new technology called Distribution Fault Anticipation (DFA). It has the capability to not only help utility providers find the cause of outages, but to also anticipate and predict some failures before outages occur. (Their published research, Application of DFA Technology for Improved Reliability and Operations, was presented at the 2017 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Rural Electric Power Conference in Columbus, Ohio.)

“Power distribution system electrical signals include specific failure signatures, which tell a story — for instance whether potential faults and outages are about to occur,” said Dr. B. Don Russell, a power engineer and the Engineering Research Chair Professor and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M.

An entirely new technology
Simply put, they’ve been ‘listening’ to the electric grid for more than a decade to analyze signals and identify which ones indicate a potential problem. Conceptually, it is not much different from an auto mechanic who can hear a problem in an old engine and know exactly what is causing it. Practically, however, this is an entirely new technology.

“A practical benefit of using DFA is the ability to detect and repair arcing and misoperating devices that often cause wildfires. In a four-year study just completed at Texas A&M, it has been proven that many fires can be prevented with this technology,” Russell said.

The Texas A&M research team led by Russell includes Carl Benner, Jeff Wischkaemper and Karthick Manivannan. Their research, sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute, developed the DFA technology. It is an autonomous, distributed computing system that provides electric utility operators a continuous situational awareness of the condition of each circuit. The result is increased reliability of their network and reduced outages. It enables the utility operator to predict adverse power line conditions and events generally not detected by conventional technologies.

“DFA recognizes the impending failure mechanisms of most distribution hardware, often allowing operators to find and fix failing devices before catastrophic failure,” said Russell. “The devices report line events to a master station server, which provides access to reports from a fleet of DFA devices on circuits across the power system.”

An obvious example of the benefits from this technology is wildfire prevention. High winds can cause electric lines to contact, causing arcing on the line and damaging it, but not causing a complete outage. The sparks from these faults have been known to start wildfires, especially during dry conditions and often without the knowledge of utility personnel. Repeated contact can burn the line down. DFA has also helped utilities detect and locate tree branches making contact with power lines and causing faults, which can start fires directly or break a line and cause it to fall to the ground.

An example of this situation was the devastating fire of 2011 in Bastrop, Texas, where a true worst-case scenario unfolded when high winds and severe drought conditions caused the most damaging wildfire in Texas history. Many wildfires in the western United States last year were also linked to electric faults.

Russell explained that awareness of adverse events and conditions, even before they cause a failure, enables utility companies to take preventive action by performing repairs or condition-based maintenance. The DFA technology is a result of more than 15 years of continuous research collaboration, resulting in the only system of its kind.

“A practical benefit of using DFA is the ability to detect and repair arcing and misoperating devices that often cause wildfires,” said Russell. “In a four-year study just completed at Texas A&M, it has been proven that many fires can be prevented with this technology. Whether preventing wildfires or dangerous power lines on the ground, DFA is the new tool that improves reliability and safety.”

Industry tested
This technology is not just lab tested, it is field proven as well.

Robert Peterson, director of control center and emergency preparedness at Pedernales Electric Cooperative, the nation’s largest distribution electric cooperative, said DFA has been invaluable in providing information that is not available any other way.

“DFA has enabled us to identify potential issues like trees on lines, failing clamps, failing arrestors, etc. and resolve those issues before they create power interruptions,” he said. “In one case, we were able to pinpoint the location of a branch on an overhead line that could have become an ignition source for wildfire in a rural subdivision. We have also used the monitors to provide information allowing us to proactively address issues with capacitor switches in order to keep our power factor within regulatory prescribed limits. Overall, the technology has proven itself to the extent that our plans now include expanding their use to the rest of our distribution system.”

Dr. Comfort Manyame, senior manager of research and technical strategy, and Robert Taylor, engineering specialist, at Mid-South Synergy were also complimentary of the technology. Taylor said, “It makes me wonder what we did before DFA,” while Manyame said they are hoping to expand their use of DFA in the coming years.

“DFA has so far been the single most important operational technology we have implemented which has given us wins in the shortest amount of time,” Manyame said. “We want to multiply our DFA benefits and improve our overall system reliability and resilience by expanding our installation, possibly to our whole system, in the next few years.”

Thomas Ellis, manager of engineering at Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, said that their control center operators have used DFA information to accurately determine the cause and location of multiple faults, including a fault that affected just one single customer on a stretch of circuit with more than 160 miles of overhead line.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to MrCAPT1409. Typos or errors, report them HERE.

European organization recruiting 15 fire-related PhD candidates

Bill GabbertDecember 3, 2019December 4, 2019UncategorizedEurope, recruiting, research, training1 Comment

PyroLife will train a new generation of experts in integrated wildfire management

Two of the 15 positions available for fire-related PhD candidates in Europe. Click to enlarge.

An organization in Europe is recruiting 15 PhD candidates who have wildfire-related masters degrees. They will be part of the PyroLife Innovative Training Network (Marie Skłodowska-Curie) involved in integrated fire management.

Ten leading institutions will host and monitor the research done by the 15 individuals who are early-stage researchers. The interdisciplinary and intersectoral consortium spans across Northwest and Southern Europe and beyond, encompassing the key disciplines and actors in fire; from academia and research institutes to small and large businesses, advocacy, governance, and emergency management.

One of the announcements for the 15 positions has already closed, and the others will very soon. Here is a link to the individual announcements.

The project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Innovative Training Networks.

The applicants will be based in various locations in Europe. Some of them will at times be in one or more of the following countries: Spain, Canada, France, Netherlands, Greece, United States, Poland, UK, Denmark, New Zealand, or Germany.

The positions may have unusual requirements concerning the location of the applicant. Here is an example:

PyroLife as a Marie Curie Action is a researcher mobility programme. You are therefore required to undertake transnational mobility in order to be eligible for recruitment. As such, you must not have resided or carried out your main activity (e.g. work, studies) in the country where you have been recruited for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the recruitment date.

Below is more information from the organization’s website:

Do you have a genuine interest in landscape fires and resilience? Are you up for an interdisciplinary challenge, looking and learning beyond your own field and assumptions? With an international team that is inclusive, collaborative, creative and open minded? Then we are looking for you!

The 2018 wildfire season was a glimpse of what to expect in the future: deadly mega-fires in Mediterranean regions and high fire activity in temperate and boreal areas outside the typical Spring fire season. We cannot solve this challenge with the old mono-disciplinary approach of fire suppression: there is a critical need to change fire management from fire resistance to landscape resilience: Living with Fire. This requires a new type of diverse experts, who not only understand fire, but who are also able to communicate risks, deal with uncertainty, and link scientific disciplines as well as science and practice.

The new Innovative Training Network PyroLife will train the new generation of interdisciplinary experts in integrated fire management, acknowledging that 1) knowledge transfer from southern Europe (and worldwide) to temperate Europe can support the new generation of experts; and 2) fire risk planning, communication and management can learn from cross-risk lessons including temperate European expertise in water management. In doing so, this project combines how the North solves community problems with the fire knowledge of the European South.

We are hiring 15 PhD candidates across Southern and Northwest Europe and across a range of scientific disciplines, from social sciences and policy to environmental sciences and engineering. We are looking for a diverse group of creative and open minded Early Stage Researchers who are able to link innovative science to society, and communicate with media, stakeholders, and policy makers.

These 15 positions are open at 6 universities, 2 research institutes, a foundation and a company across Southern and Northwest Europe. For an overview of all positions, please visit https://pyrolife.lessonsonfire.eu/

This PhD project will help formulate an effective temperate European Fire Danger rating system that is urgently needed to support the management of increased wildfire occurrence expected under changing climatic conditions. The project will take a hydrological approach, predicting the moisture content of fuels (living and dead vegetation) at a range of spatial scales; from targeted high risk localised plots to temperate European regions. Fuel moisture predictions will be devised from the development of a low-cost wireless fuel moisture sensor network combined with remotely sensed water and vegetation data. Working with secondment partners, the impact of the refined temperate fuel moisture contents on fire behaviour and fire danger will be assessed at exemplar sites. The PhD project will be based at the University of Birmingham, UK, with secondments to both the University of Alberta, Canada, and to industry partners Tecnosylva, Spain.

FEMA – After a fire your flood risk goes up

Bill GabbertDecember 3, 2019Uncategorizedflood2 Comments

In some cases a severe wildfire can leave the ground charred, barren, and unable to absorb water. That means even light rain can potentially turn into a financially devastating flash flood or mudflow. Watch the video below to learn more about the importance of flood insurance.

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