Above: Screenshot from the NASA video below about fire spread model research during a prescribed fire in Utah, June, 2019.
U.S. Forest Service scientists and others with the interagency Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, or FASMEE, teamed up with the Fishlake National Forest to study a prescribed fire from start to finish.
After months of planning and preparation, fire crews ignited more than 2,000 acres of Utah forest in an effort to consume living upper canopy vegetation and initiate growth of new vegetation. This June 2019 prescribed fire was designed to restore aspen ecosystems by removing conifer trees and stimulating the regrowth of aspen.
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest Research Station and Rocky Mountain Research Station, as well as other FASMEE participants, saw the fire as a unique opportunity for study.
During the event a fire model used for forecasting where and how a fire will move was put to the test. Adam Kochanski of the University of Utah used the opportunity to test the fire model known WRF-SFIRE.
WRF-SFIRE is a collaborative effort of NASA-funded teams from CU Denver, University of Utah, and Colorado State University. The project is led by Jan Mandel, Adam Kochanski and Kyle Hilburn.
The video below provides more details about the project and the test of the new fire model.
It started Tuesday at 3 p.m. five miles east of El Cajon, California
Map showing the location of the Dehesa Fire, September 25, 2019. Wildfire Today / Google.
With an aggressive attack from the ground and the air firefighters stopped the Dehesa Fire after it burned 200 acres 5 miles east of El Cajon, California.
The fire spread rapidly south of Dehesa Road between the Sequan Truck Trail and Sloane Canyon Road after it was reported at 3 p.m. Tuesday. By 5:15 p.m. firefighters had the spread knocked down, hemmed in between roads and retardant drops.
Dehesa Fire, September 24, 2019. CAL FIRE photo.
Wednesday morning resources assigned to the Dehesa Fire include 20 fire engines, 1 dozer, 5 water tenders, and 8 hand crews for a total of 350 personnel.
CAL FIRE photo.The Dehesa Fire as seen from Cowles Mountain at 3:37 p.m. PDT Sept. 24, looking east across El Cajon, California.
#DehesaFire in Dehesa [update] Evacuation orders have been issued for Portions of Sycuan Truck Trail and Sloan Canyon Rd. Evacuation warnings have been issued for Portions of Dehesa Rd east of Sycuan Casino. Sycuan Casino is NOT being evacuated. pic.twitter.com/xk9ZNEhlKX
Climate Change Week at the United Nations September 23 – 29, 2019
Climate change has already had significant consequences in the global wildfire reality, affecting citizens as well as the global wildland fire community. Many key issues of importance to the IAWF – including firefighter and civilian safety, fire management expenses, changing weather patterns, natural role of fire, fire regimes and ecosystem succession, as well as the wildland urban interface– all require recognition of the role of climate change.
Globally, we regularly see new reports about the “worst”, “largest”, “most expensive”, and “deadliest” fires and fire seasons. In 2019 and 2018, striking headlines read “Arctic on Fire” (Sweden, Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska), and the most expensive and largest fire years were recorded in 2018 in California and British Columbia, respectively, breaking the previous records set in 2017. The Camp Fire (CA, 2018), Attica Greece (2018), Black Saturday Australia (2009), and Portugal (2017) fires were all ranked amongst the top 11 deadliest fires in the last 100 years.
Under current climate change scenarios, fire regimes will change in terms of increases in burned area, severity, fire season length, frequency, and ignitions from lightning. Many parts of the world have already experienced an increase in record breaking temperatures and recurring droughts that have led to shifts in wildland fire. There is already evidence of climate-driven fire regime change in the Northern Hemisphere upper latitudes with fire risk increasing in non-traditional fire-prone countries. The consequences of human actions are here today, not in some distant future, and these are alarming and, most important, escalating.
The IAWF encourages all countries to emphasize increased international fire training and to implement easier cross-border sharing of professional fire management resources for suppression and prescribed fire opportunities. These will lessen the irrationally heavy burden any single country will have to carry to manage extreme fire seasons. Homes and communities must be better planned and built, so they are increasingly fire resistant and more adapted to natural disasters of all types. Health impacts of fires have long-term consequences, not only those that are immediate from the flames but also those from smoke and toxins, and these must be considered when planning and managing for future wildland fires. Wildfires and smoke do not recognize borders. As the global community tries to manage the new wildfire challenges, it is incumbent on everyone to prepare to support international neighbours in protecting lives and communities from fires and their impacts.
IAWF Vice-President Toddi Steelman recently said in Wildfire magazine (August 2019) that “Recent extreme weather events have catalysed public belief in, and concern about, climate change, and boosted public support for government actions to reduce its harmful impacts. This gives us a window of opportunity when conditions are right to make great strides on climate if we are strategic about it.” This window of opportunity requires people having the knowledge and political will to act now. Our global scientific community needs to publicly share knowledge learned about patterns of extreme wildland fire and weather, as well as how climate change is associated with these patterns. Our global fire management community needs to leverage its credibility to share its experiences about how climate change and its role in extreme weather is playing out in their day to day work environments. Connecting extreme weather events to real on-the-ground consequences can help more people understand how climate impacts are affecting us all.
Map showing the approximate location of the Gun Range Fire using heat data from a satellite at 4:24 a.m. MDT August 30, 2019. The red line is the estimated perimeter.
A Utah couple has been cited by the U.S. Forest Service for having a campfire that escaped and started what became the 365-acre Gun Range Fire near Bountiful, Utah on August 30, 2019. The fire was named after the nearby Lions Club gun range.
KSL is reporting that the U.S. Attorney’s Office confirmed that Ashlyn Nelson and Jeremy Flores were issued a ticket for leaving a campfire without fully extinguishing it. Campfires, per se, were not illegal, but allowing it to escape and ignite a wildfire, of course, is.
The fire forced the evacuation of 400 homes and was fought by multiple hotshot crews, air tankers, and helicopters in addition to a large number of local firefighting resources.
Other fires that have occurred recently in the greater Salt Lake City area since July 17, 2019:
An S-2T air tanker comes out of the smoke to drop retardant near the communication towers on Santiago Peak in Southern California August 8, 2018 as the Holy Fire approaches. HPWREN image.
Opinion: by David L. Bernhardt, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior
Last year’s wildfire season was one of the worst on record as more than 58,000 wildfires burned more than 8.8 million acres across the United States. Nearly 26,000 structures were destroyed — more than double the previous annual record — and 19 valiant members of America’s firefighting community lost their lives.
Across the country, more than 98 million people live within or adjacent to lands susceptible to wildfires. As more and more people move into or near wildfire-prone areas, it’s paramount that federal, state, and local partners collaborate on ways to effectively protect local communities.
At the Department of the Interior, we have made wildfire preparedness a top priority. Our national wildfire reduction strategy is guided by President Donald Trump’s executive order and furthered by my order. These orders guide the active management of our lands and forests and encourage managers to think about reducing fire risk in their land management actions. Implementation of both orders is a priority for reducing the risks of deadly and destructive wildfires.
This coordinated framework will help ensure the protection of people, communities, and natural resources. We are also harnessing state of the art technology and robust intergovernmental partnerships to keep our communities and wildlands safe from the kinds of devastation we have seen in the past, but this is no easy task.
Our Wildland Fire Management program uses innovative, informed approaches to minimize wildfires. While topography, terrain, and weather are often external factors that spark a wildfire, we can control the fuel that allows fires to spread, as excess vegetation leads to increased wildfire frequency, size and intensity.
Vegetation treatment methods include thinning and timber harvest; controlled burns — quite literally, fighting fire with fire — chemical treatments; targeted grazing; mechanical removal; mowing or cutting; logging; and fuel breaks, or gaps in vegetation that limit the spreading of fires. When a wildfire burns into a fuel break, the flame lengths decrease, and its progress slows, making it safer and easier for firefighters to control.
We’ve used all of these methods to try to mitigate the damage caused by wildfires, as we collaborated with federal, tribal, state and local partners on nearly 2,500 treatment projects over the past year. Leveraging these partnerships, we removed excess burnable vegetation on more than 1.2 million acres of Interior and tribally administered lands, which is 17 percent more treated acreage than in 2016, to reduce the intensity and frequency of fires in high-risk areas. Helping lead these efforts, we conducted 1,552 drone missions on 200 individual wildfires, more than double those of the previous year.
This wildfire season, we have ramped up our efforts and mobilized an array of resources by land and air.
By the season’s end, the department will have deployed approximately 4,500 firefighting personnel — including an all-female fire crew that battled blazes in Alaska — 500 tribal firefighters, 151 smokejumpers, 18 interagency hotshot crews and four tribal hotshot crews. Wildland firefighters have at their disposal more than 600 pieces of specialized equipment, including engines, water tenders and dozers. Aviation assets also continue to play a critical role in efforts to manage wildfires, as the department employs 23 single-engine air tankers, six water scoopers, helicopters, and drones.
We are using everything at our disposal to protect Western communities from wildfires; and, with the help from the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act’s provisions on wildfire technology modernization, we will continue to use advanced and emerging technologies to stay on the cutting edge of firefighting and fire prevention. The department is also actively harnessing state-of-the-art technology to improve real-time communication and tracking for incidents to increase firefighter safety.
In Colorado, more than 27,000 acres of land will be treated by the end of this fiscal year. One specific project completed already by the Bureau of Land Management is a 286-acre prescribed fire near Bayfield called the Rabbit Mountain Project Prescribed Fire. It was completed to restore and maintain a healthy ecosystem and reduce the risk of wildfire to private lands in the area. The prescribed fire will reinvigorate grasses, forbs, and shrubs and improve deer and elk habitat. Numerous other areas around the state are being treated, in addition to the active wildfire management that is ongoing to contain and extinguish current wildfires.
Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of the Interior is pursuing innovative and effective wildfire management efforts, and we have made significant progress so far to deliver on the president’s goals for wildfire prevention and treatment. More work can and must be done, and we will continue to find new and improved ways to keep our people, communities, lands and resources safe and secure — now and in the years ahead.
It is another step toward the Holy Grail of Wildland Firefighter Safety
An example of the technician’s screen when using the FIRIS system. Screenshot from the video below.
This month the Orange County Fire Authority began a 150-day pilot program that could lead to real time fire mapping being available to firefighters on the ground. Not knowing exactly where a fire is has been a factor in more than two dozen firefighter fatalities in recent decades. Smoke, terrain, and darkness can obstruct the view of fire crews and supervisors which can severely compromise their situational awareness.
The 150-day Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS) pilot program got off the ground September 1 thanks to funding secured in the 2019-2020 California state budget by Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Laguna Beach).
“The State of California must shift strategies to address the constant crisis of wildfires – this is no longer a seasonal threat,” stated Assemblywoman Petrie-Norris. “I am proud to have partnered with the Orange County Fire Authority in securing $4.5 million in state funds for technology that will protect lives and property by giving first responders better, stronger tools to use against the threat of wildfires.”
The system utilizes a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with infrared and radar sensors that can see through smoke. The plane provides real-time fire perimeter mapping and live high definition video to support supercomputer-based wildfire predictive spread modeling.
Screenshot of aircraft featured in the FIRIS B-Roll video.
A supercomputer at the University of California San Diego will run fire spread projections based on fire perimeter data collected by the aircraft. The output will estimate where the fire will be in the next six hours. The fire spread model will adjust for successful fire suppression actions by firefighters on the ground and in the air. This intel allows for more timely and accurate decision making for resource allocation and evacuations.
“The ability to place resources exactly where they need to be to successfully battle a wildfire can mean the difference between lives and property saved or lost”, said Orange County Fire Authority Fire Chief Brian Fennessy. “Technology is becoming increasingly important as we work to suppress wildfires quickly. We’re hopeful this pilot program may someday become a routine asset statewide.”
For decision-makers on the ground, a common operating picture increases situational awareness. Firefighters on the front line, incident commanders, law enforcement, and regional and state emergency operation centers all could have the ability to see the same fire intel on a smartphone, tablet or computer in real-time. Fire perimeter maps and live video feeds are provided through an electronic network to assist decision-makers.
This is another step toward the Holy Grail of Wildland Firefighter Safety which would ultimately provide to fire supervisors the real time location of a fire and the location of firefighting personnel and equipment.
The video below is “B-Roll”, that is, unedited footage. The first 6.5 minutes are simply images of aircraft, but after that you will be able to look over the shoulder of the imagery technician as he observes infrared imagery of a fire, manually interprets the heat signatures, then traces the fire perimeter on the screen. That perimeter could then be electronically sent to the super computer in San Diego County which would run a fire spread model to predict what the fire will do in the next six hours.
