Wildfire Today

News and opinion about wildland fire

Wildfire Today

Earth Day is a quiet fire day – except for coastal North Carolina

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

On April 22, 2023, Earth Day 2023,  the largest fire of national note is burning in North Carolina.

For April 21, the most recent update of the national portal for the Geographic Area Coordination Centers – because it’s not quite busy enough for weekend staffing – there are three GACCs at Preparedness Level 2 – Eastern, Southern, and Southwest – while the rest of the country is at PL 1.  And a scan of national-level fire hazards doesn’t show any Red Flag Warnings or Watches for the day.

For the prior week, national initial attack activity in the National Situation Report was considered light at 1,075 fires, with 50 large fires reported and 50 contained. Fire names ranged from a label only an agency can love (AR-BUP-000924 in the Buffalo National River)  to a menagerie of animals – Swine, Third Goat, Antelope Flats, Wolf Creek, Otter Creek, Kingfisher Hollow – to the uniquely local – Natural Bridge (named for the actual Natural Bridge in Kentucky), Muzzle Loader Club (perhaps the local shooting range in Oklahoma?), Jimmys Water Hole in New Jersey and Shinhollow in New York, and Tinaja in southern Arizona (translated from the Spanish as “large earthenware jar”).

The Fire Weather Outlook for Earth Day was minimal except for southwest Arizona. The Day 2 Fire Weather Outlook for today noted that “Elevated conditions are likely near the international border in the Lower Colorado River Basin, as 15 mph sustained southwesterly surface winds overlap with 15 percent humidity for a few hours around afternoon peak heating. Elevated highlights were added since fuels should be marginally receptive to fire spread.” Looking ahead, the only fire hazard of note in the fire weather outlook is for the New Mexico-Texas-Mexico area on Tuesday-Wednesday, April 25-26.

All this being duly noted, one can be certain that residents near the Great Lakes Fire will agree that this fire (also called the Great Lake Fire) likely holds claim to being Earth Day’s fire of note in the U.S. Named for a singular Great Lake, with other lakes around it, in the Croatan National Forest), the fire quadrupled in size in 24 hours, from 7000 to an estimated 30,000+ acres, with a national Southern Area fire management team being assigned.

As noted yesterday in our partner site, FireAviation.com, the VIIRS satellite data offered space-based mapping of  yesterday’s growth that was confirmed in the map available today from the Risk Management Assistance Dashboard … compared to yesterday’s rapid spread, the majority of recent heat signatures are to the north, where the fire is burning into and between past fuel treatments. The fire has definitely outgrown the 21,000 acre footprint of 2012’s Dad Fire.

Great Lake Fire Croatan NF NC 2023-04-22

Additional mapping is being shared by Joseph Elfelt …

And current info arrives from a variety of Twitter posts with the handle of #GreatLakeFire (no plural) …

A recent tweet equated the fire’s size to the acreage of DisneyWorld, which, in case you were curious, was forecast to have average crowds for Earth Day according to the Magic Guides Crowd Calendar.

There is no current estimate for how many firefighters are working the Great Lake(s) Fire, though it’s certainly increasing. Yesterday’s census for the Southern Area had some 1200 resources assigned in the overall GACC area.

$11 million contest for innovation in fighting fire

Author Kelly AnderssonPosted on Categories ResearchTags , , , 7 Comments on $11 million contest for innovation in fighting fire

Best-selling author and futurist Peter Diamandis became frustrated in recent years with the “craziness” of constant wildfire alerts he’d received. But unlike most people, Diamandis has a Rolodex full of wealthy benefactors and politicians, along with experience with a solution he had used before: Create a contest.

On April 21 his group XPRIZE launched its latest contest: finding new ideas to detect and suppress wildfires.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) said the prize threshold includes detecting and suppressing a high-risk wildfire in 10 minutes or less, and pinpointing from space all fire ignitions across multiple states or countries — in 60 seconds. These are the challenges for innovators in XPRIZE Wildfire, a four-year, $11 million competition to develop and demonstrate fully autonomous capabilities to find and fight wildfires.

XPRIZE Wildfire

The United Nations, the White House, and Congress recently have prioritized destructive wildfires as a major economic, environmental, and safety threat. Patti Poppe, CEO of PG&E, said they are co-sponsoring the project. “Today’s launch of XPRIZE Wildfire is a call-to-action to entrepreneurs, roboticists, artificial-intelligence experts, scientists, and innovators from across the globe to revolutionize wildfire detection and suppression,” she said.

XPRIZE Wildfire encourages teams from around the world to innovate across firefighting technologies in two different tracks designed to transform how fires are detected and suppressed.

    • In the Autonomous Wildfire Response track, teams will need to monitor at least 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles), and autonomously suppress a wildfire within 10 minutes of detection.
    • In the Space-Based Wildfire Detection & Intelligence track, teams will have one minute to accurately detect all fires across a landscape larger than entire states or countries, and 10 minutes to precisely characterize and report data (with the fewest false positives) to two ground stations.

The day before something is a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Palmer Luckey, a 30-year-old founder of Oculus, a virtual reality company that sold for $2 billion, announced that he was forming the first team to compete for the prize. He said he cares more about solving the problem than winning the money, but he believes the cash will motivate other contestants to form teams and compete.

“I sold my last company for billions of dollars so I can do whatever I want,” he said. “We started working on wildfire tech because I think it’s very, very important. The money in this prize to me is honestly immaterial.” Luckey said at the contest launch that he thinks software, not hardware, will make the difference in detecting and containing fires.

The four-year contest is not winner-take-all. Teams will compete for top prizes of as much as $3.5 million and a bonus $1 million prize to develop technology that can detect fires both from the ground and from space, and fight them using drones or other autonomous vehicles. They’ll compete, for example, to see which technology can accurately detect fires across a land mass the size of a state or country in one minute or suppress fires using an autonomous vehicle within 10 minutes.

Andrea Santy, who is running the competition for XPrize, also said the prize money may not be the most important driver. Teams will benefit from multiple rounds of live testing and validation that would be hard to organize independently. The group is spending an additional $11 million beyond the prize money to run the contest, she said; some of that money will fund a documentary about the competition.

XPRIZE Wildfire is offered in partnership with Co-Sponsors PG&E and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Presenting Sponsor Minderoo Foundation, Bonus Prize Sponsor Lockheed Martin, Supporting Sponsor Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and Benefactors Nichola Eliovits and Michael Antonov. Sixteen teams are already registered. For more information, to get involved, or to register a team to compete, visit the xprize.org/wildfire website.

Volunteer firefighter in Pennsylvania charged with 60 felonies after lighting two dozen fires

Author Kelly AnderssonPosted on Categories ArsonTags ,

YET ANOTHER TOILET PAPER ARSONIST:  An 18-year-old volunteer firefighter allegedly started 21 wildfires over the last couple months; ABC-27 News reported that Adam Ewing, of Three Springs, was arrested by the Bureau of Forestry for setting wildland fires in February and March.

On Saturday, Feb. 11, a series of wildfires started in southern Huntingdon County. Just before 2:30 p.m., crews were called out to a fire near Captain Jack’s Road. This fire burned about a half acre in dead leaves and brush before firefighters could control the flames. About 20 minutes later, crews were dispatched to another fire along Old Tannery Road in the Saltillo Borough. Another third of an acre was burned before firefighters were able to control it, according to a criminal affidavit.

On Feb. 14, investigators from the Bureau of Forestry visited the locations of the two fires to determine a cause. They concluded the fires had been maliciously lit with the intention to burn or spread.

another toilet paper arsonist
Adam Ewing, of Three Springs, was arrested by the Bureau of Forestry for setting 21 fires in Huntingdon County in February and March. Huntingdon County Prison photo

WTAJ-TV News reported that just before 2:30 p.m., crews were called out to a fire near Captain Jack’s Road; it burned .51 acres of dead leaves and brush before firefighters were able to extinguish the flames.

Investigators then learned that Ewing was the one who had called in the fire along Captain Jack’s Road. Later on Feb. 14, multiple fire crews were called out after two wildfires were reported near Hamman Road and Sugar Grove Road in Cromwell Township. Investigators from the Bureau of Forestry responded to the fires and were able to confirm again that these fires had been intentionally lit, according to the criminal complaint. The Three Springs Volunteer Fire Company’s Chief Chris Grace told the forestry investigators that Ewing — a volunteer firefighter — was the first to arrive at the fire station for the call. On Feb. 23 and 24, another 10 fires were reported — and also called arson by state Forestry. Police noted in the filed charges that at three of the fires, they found pieces of toilet paper with a rose pattern. Investigators went to Ewing’s home, where they confirmed that the toilet paper at the burn sites matched the rose pattern toilet paper at Ewing’s home. Ewing has yet to post his $500,000 bail. He’s facing 63 felony charges

Northeast News: RxFire, highway closure, and drone warnings

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Prescribed Fire, WildfireTags , , , ,

April in New Jersey was dry and windy enough for numerous Red Flag Warnings this past week, but the state Forest Fire Service still pulled off a prescribed burn and contained a wildfire.

NJ Forest Fire Service firefighters Log Swamp Fire 20130416
New Jersey Forest Fire Service firefighters patrol the line on the Log Swamp Fire. Photo: NJ Forest Fire Service.

Another New Jersey fire, the Kanouse Fire, burned 1000 acres in northern New Jersey, leading to evacuations — of five homes and 100+ animals from the Echo Lake Stables. Embers were reported to have started fires a half mile across Echo Lake, with the fire staffed by multiple agencies.

Though fire danger has been high to very high statewide in recent days, fire restrictions have been lifted in two of the three statewide zones as today’s calmer winds reduced fire risk.

Today’s date also marks 60 years since New Jersey’s “Black Saturday” on April 20, 1963, when 30-50 mph winds, humidity in the low 20s and temperatures in the low 80s fanned the rapid spread of 31 major fires that burned 190,000 acres, destroyed or damaged 400 structures, and evacuated 2500 residents.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, after a week with the entire state in high fire danger, the southern and central zones are now in high fire danger and the rest of the state is classed as moderate.

This past weekend, according to Lehigh Valley Live, the 4000-acre Crystal Lake Fire east of Mountain Top led to the closure of 20 miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike between the Poconos and Wyoming Valley interchanges.

Also during the weekend, a drone-airspace intrusion on the Peter’s Mountain Fire in Dauphin County was reported by WGAL-TV.  The report reminded people that interfering with firefighting operations on public lands, per the Federal Aviation Administration, can carry a 12-month prison term, and drone pilots who interfere with wildfire suppression could also receive a fine of more than $37,000.

National Firefighter Registry opens for profession-wide cancer monitoring

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Research, SafetyTags , , ,

The National Firefighter Registry (NFR) officially opens its enrollment portal today after a few months in pre-launch testing and years of preparation by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Wildland and structural firefighters who register and share their exposure histories at NFR.cdc.gov will help support the NFR’s goal of understanding and reducing cancer in firefighters.

The registry seeks comprehensive participation and notes four objectives that firefighters will support by enrolling:

      • “Help protect your brothers and sisters in the fire service from developing cancer
      • “Help lessen the impact of cancer on firefighters’ families and friends
      • “Pave the way for new health and safety measures to keep the next generation of firefighters safe
      • “Improve understanding of cancer risk among minority, female, and volunteer firefighters, as well as groups like wildland firefighters”

To develop comprehensive and ongoing  analyses of risks and illnesses, the NFR  encourages participation by all firefighters, structural and wildland, and all statuses — volunteer, on-call, seasonal, full-time, retired, disabled, with or without a cancer diagnosis.

While the images on the registry often focus on structural firefighters, the associated links include background health and cancer information for wildland firefighters and a web page focused on outdoor workers and smoke.

National Firefighter Registry

Bill Gabbert wrote many articles in Wildfire Today covering the genesis and progress toward the National Firefighter Registry (also referred to as the “cancer registry”). One article shared Kathleen Navarro’s “A Brief Look” at cancer and health risks for wildland firefighters, which notes an estimated 8-43% increased chance of lung cancer and a 16-30% increased risk of heart disease mortality among wildland firefighters. Gabbert died of cancer in January.

For agencies and organizations seeking to support enrollment, a communications portal offers a range of print and social media messages.

One suggestion when registering: gather up your experience records first. I completed the first three registration stages (the “profile” stage) in around 10 minutes and then took a break to collect some notes on seasons of service and types and amount of exposure. A registrant can step aside from the profile stage of the portal and continue later, but once you enter details of your fire experience in the “experience” stage of registration, you aren’t able to edit it.

Recording an accurate representation of work and fire experience is a core component of the registry, which seeks to create a database of fire experience, firefighter’s risk exposure and long-term health effects. This has proven a challenge for researchers examining the higher prevalence of cancer occurrence among firefighters.

This can be particularly challenging with wildland firefighters serving on seasonal assignments (and with seasonal exposure to many varieties and quantities of smoke and other potential fireline-related carcinogens). The registry includes questions that may assist in determining wildland smoke exposure, including a firefighter’s role in fire — such as hand crew, engine crew, aviation, etc.; firefighter or fire manager; and the duration and type of fires (wildfire vs. prescribed) that a firefighter responded to on average, by the specific positions held. The experience questionnaire includes most varieties of fire experience, including wildland-urban interface as compared to wildfires. The experience and personal demographic sections may take from 20-30 minutes to complete, longer if you’d had a variety of positions and fire experience in your career.

National Firefighter Registry - Stage 3 profile completed.
National Firefighter Registry – the Profile stages completed. Take a break and gather your exposure history before tackling the Experience Questionnaire.

The document below shares a step-by-step process. Note that the consent is in-depth, in part to ensure participants that their shared information will be kept confidential. Survey questions include general health and demographic questions, including a history of tobacco or alcohol use and workplace but non-fire exposure to potential carcinogens.

Once a firefighter is registered, an anonymized tracking system in state cancer registries will link a cancer diagnosis (if one occurs) to the last four digits of a social security number, which will then correlate the diagnosis with the NFR data that includes the firefighter’s experience and exposure. In some cases, NIOSH may connect with a registered firefighter to seek voluntary participation in additional research.

[pdf-embedder url=”https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/How-to-signup-for-Firefighter-Registry.pdf” title=”How to signup for Firefighter Registry”]

Earlier, warmer spring ramps up Eastern Area fire season

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories WildfireTags , ,

The Jimmy’s Waterhole Fire in New Jersey was declared 100% contained on Thursday by the New Jersey Department of Forestry, having burned some 3900 acres, nearly half the state’s annual average in two days.

This and other regional fires prompts a visit to the Eastern Area Fire Environment Outlook to explore the conditions that led to the late April fire bust. On Friday’s Morning Briefing, the Eastern Area Coordination Center had nearly 40 percent of reporting units in Very High to Extreme Fire Danger, with the largest fires in New Jersey, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Rhode Island. In the past week, the region recorded 349 fires for 12,600 acres.

While spring is often active in the east — as forest fuels dry out between winter snow and rains and prior to green up —  the last week was drier throughout the Northeast and Midwest, as well as in the Great Plains and Southwest. Look south and you can spot the focused and incredible “purple” deluge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and to the north there’s an unusual heart-shaped moisture pattern in Michigan.

7-Day Percent of Normal Precipitation through April 14, 2023.

Spring in much of the East and Midwest was also warmer than normal …

… resulting in a 10-20 day earlier start to spring in the South and East, per the National Phenology Network. At least one location in New Jersey was tracked at 27 days early.

Fire activity in the region has been moving northeast toward Maine with the bubble of heat, including a fire point seemingly in the Atlantic — though a closer look at the Fire Weather Dashboard (with fire points activated) places the the fire on Martha’s Vineyard.

Soon, though, the spring fire season will be taking a hiatus, with greenup, increasing humidity, and even fog on the way. By Monday, moisture is expected in the East, with most predictive service areas transitioning to “Little or no risk.”