Wildfire burns 100 homes in Chile

The fire burned into the port city of Valparaiso.

On Monday a wildfire burned approximately 100 homes in Valparaiso, Chile. There are reports that 19 people were injured and hundreds were forced to evacuate. The fire was fought by firefighters on the ground assisted by air tankers and helicopters dropping water.

Pushed by strong winds it burned about 120 acres of vegetation 75 miles northwest of Santiago.

An air tanker pilot was killed December 28 while working on a fire in the Bío Bío region.

Sky lantern may have caused warehouse fire

Sky lantern
Sky lantern, file photo.

The most likely cause of a fire that damaged a warehouse in the Philippines is a sky lantern, a small balloon carried aloft by burning fuel attached to its base.

According to the Cebu Daily News, Felix Suico Jr., head of the Bantay Mandaue Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office, said the fire may have been caused by a lighted sky lantern that landed on the warehouse’s roof. The fire was reported at 12:27 a.m. on January 1. The building was used to store electrical supplies.

Several other fires that broke out at around midnight on New Year’s Eve burned 400 homes in Barangays Guizo and Maguikay, Mandaue City. The causes of those fires have not been released.

News Sentinel article about Gatlinburg fire

Don Jacobs of the Knoxville News Sentinel has written a well researched article about the Chimney Tops 2 Fire that burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee on November 28. The fire was monitored but not suppressed for five days until a predicted wind event pushed the fire into the city, killing 14 people, destroying 2,013 homes and 53 commercial structures, and causing more than $500 million in damage.

In addition to talking with Great Smoky Mountains National Park personnel in an attempt to determine what actions were taken on the fire, Mr. Jacobs interviewed four former wildland firefighters to gather information about how wildfires are typically managed.

Below is the beginning of the article. You can read the entire piece here.

Officials should have doused a 1.5-acre fire in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park days before high winds created a megafire that swept into Gatlinburg, former U.S. Forest Service firefighters said .

At the very least, said retired employees with almost 200 years of firefighting experience, officials in the National Park should have summoned every resource available when alerted Nov. 26 of the expected high winds.

“I’ve written for years that the best way to keep fires from becoming megafires is to attack them with overwhelming force, both on the ground and from the air,” said Bill Gabbert, who writes an online blog about wildland fires and aviation resources to battle wildland fires.

“People say that is very expensive, but it is not as expensive as losing 14 lives and $500 million in lost structures.”

Gabbert has written three articles on wildfiretoday.com about the Gatlinburg fires, providing technical data about fire conditions and aerial resources available to firefighters.

Four other former U.S. Forest Service firefighters agreed park officials didn’t pay attention to the severe drought, low humidity that provided a tinderbox for flames, available options to quell the slow-moving fire before winds made the flames uncontrollable and alarming weather forecasts.

Mr. Jacobs quoted the park’s Superintendent, Clay Jordan, as saying:

There was no way the fire could have been extinguished before the winds came.

For the most current information about the Chimney Tops 2 Fire at Gatlinburg, see our articles tagged “Chimney 2 Fire”.

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Red Flag Warnings, December 30, 2016

The National Weather Service has posted Red Flag Warnings for areas in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri.

The map was current as of 11:35 a.m. MT on Friday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts and maps.

red flag warning OK TX
The map shows a portion of the areas under a Red Flag Warning in Texas and Oklahoma.

Wildfires break out in southern Switzerland

The area on the south side of the Alps has not had any precipitation in over a month.

Above:  A privately owned helicopters works a wildfire near Soazza, Switzerland. Photo by Niklaus Watchman.

While much of Switzerland is covered with snow, wildfires have broken out on the south side of the Alps. Military helicopters, Super Pumas, are assisting the firefighters on the ground.

Below is an excerpt from an article at Swissinfo.ch:

More than 30 people have been evacuated from their houses due to forest fires in southern Switzerland. Strong winds and the ruggedness of the terrain are hampering efforts to contain the blaze.

The mountainous region south of the Alps hasn’t had any rain for more than a month.

Local fire brigades have been deployed to try to contain the blaze. The defence ministry said five army helicopters helped drop water for aerial firefighting on Wednesday.

Nevertheless, the blaze in the Mesocco Valley managed to spread across an area equivalent to 90 football fields due to dry conditions officials said.

The A13 San Bernardino motorway was temporarily closed and at least four people were evacuated as a precaution in the village of Mesocco. Police expects it will take several days or weeks to put out the fire. It is not known what started the fire on Tuesday.

A smaller fire was also reported from the neighbouring Calanca Valley on Wednesday.

wildfire soazza switzerland
Map showing the location of two fires in southeast Switzerland, December 28, 2016.

More information about the helicopters being used on the fires is at Fire Aviation.