The blaze has burned 10,579 hectares (26,133 acres) in Western Australia
Map shows heat detected by a satellite at the bushfire northeast of Perth, Western Australia as late as 7:06 p.m. local time Feb. 4, 2021.
Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan announced $4,000 emergency funding will be provided for those whose homes have been destroyed by the fire northeast of Perth. In addition, $2,000 will be made available for those whose homes have been damaged.
The Premier said the Shady Hills area has been saved, “a remarkable achievement given the ferocity of the fire,” he said, but the total number of homes destroyed in the bushfire is now assessed at 81.
Fireys could get some relief Saturday with a 90 percent chance of rain, about 10-20mm according to the forecast. The high temperature Saturday will also drop to 21°C.
One more large air tanker was flown across the continent to assist with the blaze that has burned 10,579 hectares (26,133 acres) according to a Friday morning update from Emergency WA. This brought the fleet of large air tankers temporarily in Western Australia up to three — two 737s operated by NSW RFS and Coulson, and one Coulson C-130.
NSW RFS’ 737 dropping on the Perth Hills Bushfire. ABC image.Tracking the large air tankers working Perth Hills Bushfire, reloading at Busselton. Coulson image; two 737s and one C-130.
The blaze has burned over 25,000 acres (10,000 ha)
Updated at 3:13 a.m. AWT, February 4, 2021
Map shows heat detected by a satellite at the bushfire northeast of Perth, Western Australia at 2 a.m. local time Feb. 4, 2021. The lighter-colored icons are the most recent.
A satellite that detected heat on the Perth Hills bushfire in Western Australia at 2 a.m. local time on February 4, showed that most of the growth on Wednesday was on the north side of the fire, southeast of Bullsbrook. (See the map above.)
Emergency WA reported at 1:48 a.m. February 4 that the fire has now burned 10,237 hectares (25,296 acres). The number of reported homes burned has not changed, and is still 71.
The weather forecast for Muchea predicts cooler temperatures for Thursday, 28°C in the afternoon and wind out of the east-southeast at 28km/h with a relative humidity of 22 percent. Friday will be about the same.
Updated at 10:16 a.m. Western Australia time, Feb. 3, 2021
Authorities have updated the number of homes burned in the bushfire northeast of Perth in Western Australia to 71. (scroll down to see a map of the fire)
Officials are advising residents who are advised to evacuate to not worry about the COVID lockdown.
The revised weather forecast for Muchea is now predicting wind gusts up to 70 kph in some areas, which will make the work of the firefighters even more difficult. For Wednesday, sunny in the afternoon. Winds E/SE 15 to 20 km/h tending S/SE in the morning then increasing to 25 to 40 km/h in the middle of the day. Gusts to 70km/h possible about the hills and foothills during the evening. Daytime maximum temperatures in the low to mid 30s. The relative humidity will be 30 percent in the afternoon.
Emergency WA reported the fire has now burned 9,464 hectares (23,886 acres). The cause of the fire, which is being managed by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, has not been released.
Originally published at 5:17 a.m. Western Australia time, Feb. 3, 2021
Map shows heat detected by a satellite at the bushfire northeast of Perth, Western Australia at 3:10 a.m. local time February 3, 2021.
A bushfire has destroyed 59 homes northeast of Perth, Western Australia. The blaze was about 14 Km north of Midland and approximately 13 Km south of Muchea at 3:10 a.m. Feb. 3 local time (see the map above).
Emergency WA reports that it has burned 9,189 hectares (22,700 acres) since it was reported at 12:02 p.m. February 1, 2021.
An emergency warning is in place for parts of the shires of Mundaring, Chittering and Northam, and the City of Swan, forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate. Suburbs affected include The Vines, Ellenbrook, Gidgegannup, Upper Swan, Baskerville, Aveley, Henley Brook, Bullsbrook, Brigadoon and Wooroloo.
A Watch and Act warning is in place for nearby areas including Hovea, Stoneville, Wundowie, Mount Helena, Jane Brook, Herne Hill, Muchea and Parkerville.
The weather forecast for Wednesday for the Muchea area calls for 35°C in the afternoon and wind out of the south-southwest at 17km/h with a relative humidity of 30 percent. Thursday the wind will be stronger and out of the east-southeast at 24 to 31 km/h with 22 percent relative humidity. These conditions could increase the danger to areas north of the fire.
I have seen many videos shot while driving through fire areas, but none that showed worse visibility caused by smoke as seen in the video below.
Firefighters dodged flames while driving in Western Australia, as fire officials issued an emergency warning following a bushfire that broke out east of Perth.
Since December a large air tanker has been stationed in Western Australia on a three-month deployment at Busselton for the 2020/2021 bushfire season — Tanker 132, a C-130 operated by Coulson. To help with the fire it is being joined by New South Wales Bomber 210, which is a 737, and a lead plane.
Following a request from Western Australia the #NSWRFS is deploying the Marie Bashir (Large Air Tanker) and lead plane to assist firefighters battling blazes near Perth and across the state over the next week. pic.twitter.com/jGKXu04Hyx
The icons on the map represent heat detected at the Red Gully Bushfire by a satellite at 2:10 a.m. AWT January 6, 2021.
A large bushfire has forced some residents in Western Australia to leave their homes. The Red Gully Bushfire has been burning since January 2 between the Gingin and Dandaragan areas about 100 km. north of Perth. The blaze stretches from Regans Ford west toward Lancelin and is burning toward Indian Ocean Drive.
Emergency WA issued the following warning at 7:44 a.m. AWT January 6, 2021:
Bushfire Emergency Warning – in or near OCEAN FARMS ESTATE, SEAVIEW PARK and surrounding areas bounded by Brand Highway to the east, Nammegarra Road to the north, the northern end of Mimegarra Road, Meadows Road, the coast to the west, Sappers Road to the south, Indian Ocean Drive, K.W. Road, Sappers Road, Cowalla Road and east to Brand Highway at the Orange Springs Road intersection across the northern edge of Moore River National Park in parts of REGANS FORD, COWALLA, MOORE RIVER NATIONAL PARK, NILGEN, MIMEGARRA, WEDGE ISLAND, KARAKIN, ORANGE SPRINGS and LANCELIN in the SHIRES OF GINGIN and DANDARAGAN
The fire has burned more than 2,000 ha (4,900 acres) and has been spreading to the west or west-northwest at about three kilometers per hour.
Two of Coulson’s C-130 air tankers that are on contract in Australia are now positioned in Western Australia.
Coulson C-130 air tankers, 131 and 132. (They have different numbers in Australia) Coulson photo.
Officials in Australia have started a process that should be of interest to fire managers and public officials in the United States. They are establishing across the continent common terminology and symbols to indicate the level of threat from an existing wildfire or other emergency and the recommended action that should be taken. Previously there was not complete consistency among the eight states and territories, which at times led to confusion about what the level of danger was and the action that should be taken. This was especially a problem near the borders of the states when a message from across the border may use unfamiliar jargon.
The new Australian Warning System icons, 2020.
The Australian Bushfire Warning System is a national, three level bushfire alert system, “Advice”, “Watch and Act”, and “Emergency Warning”. Australia recognized the inconsistency problem with their 8 states.
But not only do the 50 U.S. states have different systems for describing potential and current wildfire conditions, they also may differ city to city and county to county.
Warnings for evacuations
One of the most stressful times in a person’s life can be when they are forced to evacuate due to a wildfire, flood, or extreme weather event. This is not the time to give them ambiguous instructions, or use jargon many of them have never heard before. LEVEL TWO EVACUATION! What in the hell does that mean? Or, EVACUATION IS AT THE SET LEVEL! Or, WATCH AND ACT!
Recently used evacuation jargon has included:
Mandatory, Order, and Voluntary;
Level 1, 2, and 3 (or, I, II, and III)
Stage 1, 2, and 3
Ready, Set, and Go
And I won’t even get into some that have been used for large structures such as Horizontal, Vertical, Partial, Vertical Phased, or Progressive Horizontal.
After reflecting on the massive evacuations required by wildfires in 2017 and 2018, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recommended standard evacuation terminology and phrases for cities and counties to use during an emergency within the state, based in part on a White Paper written for the office in 2019.
Evacuation Order: Immediate threat to life. This is a lawful order to leave now. The area is lawfully closed to public access.
Evacuation Warning: Potential threat to life and/or property. Those who require additional time to evacuate, and those with pets and livestock should leave now.
Shelter in Place: Go indoors. Shut and lock doors and windows. Prepare to self-sustain until further notice and/or contacted by emergency personnel for additional direction.
Evacuation Order(s) Lifted: The formal announcement of lifting evacuations in an area currently under evacuation.
Hard Closure: Closed to all traffic except Fire and Law Enforcement.
Soft Closure: Closed to all traffic except Fire, Law Enforcement and critical Incident resources (i.e. Utility, Caltrans, City/County Roads etc. or those needed to repair or restore infrastructure).
Resident Only Closure: Soft closure with the additional allowance of residents and local government agencies assisting with response and recovery.
In most U.S. locations fire departments do not have the authority to issue evacuation orders. It is generally stipulated they have the expertise to know when and where it should take place but they make that recommendation to law enforcement who actually issue the order to the public, and enforce it when necessary.
Notifying citizens that they are in the path of a fire has proven to be extremely difficult, subject to technical problems and human error. Many jurisdictions have purchased reverse 911 systems that can make phone calls or send texts to warn residents in a specific area of a threat. In some cases each person has to opt-in, and if you’re a visitor you may not be notified. There are a few apps available for mobile phones, some of which are not operated by government agencies and may not be 100 percent reliable for immediate notification.
Wildfire apps and services
The U.S. Forest Service has had Wildfires Near Me in development since 2016, and it is still in beta. It’s not an app, but you can sign up online, give them an address you’re interested in, and specify to be notified by email or text message of wildfires within your desired distance from that address. It does not issue emergency notifications such as evacuation orders, but you might receive a notice each time an updated Incident Status Summary form, (ICS-209) has been entered in the NIFC system, once or twice a day, about fires in that location. Then you can go to InciWeb to get more details.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has a “web-based app” but it can’t be installed from the Android, Google, or Apple app stores. It can provide some information about fires managed by CAL FIRE, but it generally has no information about US Forest Service responsibility fires or those of local jurisdiction. Colorado also has an app, Colorado Wildfire Watch App which is designed to only be available to people in the state.
Wireless Emergency Alerts
A system in the United States, Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), is another possibility and can be activated by state and local public safety officials, the National Weather Service (NWS), the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (think Amber Alert), and the president of the United States. Beginning in 2019 the accuracy of the geotargeting for WEA became more precise, requiring providers to deliver the alerts to the area specified by the alert originator with no more than a 1/10 of a mile overshoot. The system uses location processing in the mobile phone itself. The handset receives the alert including the polygon of the alert area, then the phone uses its GPS-assisted location to determine whether it is inside or outside the polygon. Even if you’re far from home, but in the threat area, you should receive the alert.
On August 15, 2020 the NWS used WEA to send out the first ever real time warning about a fire tornado on the Loyalton Fire about 12 miles northwest of Reno, Nevada.
“Our forecasters were tracking the plume on radar and were seeing rotation signatures comparable to that of a tornado. Factoring in public and firefighter safety, they issued a rare tornado warning associated with a large fire,” said NWS Reno Meteorologist and Public Information Officer Chris Smallcomb. Upon inspection, NWS found evidence of three different tornado paths with the largest being a low-grade EF-2. Said Smallcomb, “NWS Reno’s fire tornado warning has resulted in a robust policy conversation within the NWS and partner agencies about the utility of such warnings in a wildland fire situation, since it had never been done before!”
Between January 1 and September 14, 2020, alerting authorities sent 1,750 WEAs. The topics were for missing children AMBER alerts, severe weather, flash floods, and COVID-19 related for mask wearing, shelter-in-place notices, social distancing, and testing facility locations.
Do we need a national fire warning app specifically for wildfires?
Australia has considered the development of a national all-hazard warning app to address the limitations of the bushfire warning apps during the 2019-2020 bushfire season. Some state or local jurisdictions in Australia have apps that can push notifications and have Watch Zone functionalities.
Australia’s Royal Commission report included this about the potential for a national bushfire warning app:
Data from state and territory governments lacks consistency and this presents a challenge to developing a national warning app. Availability of nationally consistent data is a key enabler for the development of a national app by the Australian government, or a commercial provider.
One of the many recommendations in the report issued in October by Australia’s “Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements” was to make the country’s Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS) more uniform across the eight states and territories. The goal was to ensure that there is national consistency in the visual display of the AFDRS and action to be taken in response to each rating. Since then progress has been made, which is not always the case down under and in the United States following reports and studies that urge changes to be made.
The new standardized icons representing three levels of warning for five types of events are seen above. Below is what was previously used for bushfires.
The various icons for bushfires across Australia that are being replaced.
The Australian Bushfire Warning System is a national, three level bushfire alert system: “Advice”, “Watch and Act”, and “Emergency Warning”. The alert system is an important framework used by emergency services agencies to indicate the level of threat from a fire and the recommended action that should be taken. The higher the warning level, the greater the risk to life and property.
The Royal Commission’s report indicated that there was some confusion about the meaning of “Watch and Act.”
From the report by the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, page 296.
Research released in November, 2019 showed that nationwide only 53 percent of Australians surveyed understood the required behavior of Watch and Act. On the other hand, only 57 percent understood the behavior required under Emergency Warning.
But the new standards recently issued retain the same three levels, including Watch and Act as the middle level of warning:
Advice (Yellow). An incident has started. There is no immediate danger. Stay up to date in case the situation changes.
Watch and Act (Orange). There is a heightened level of threat. Conditions are changing and you need to start taking action now to protect you and your family.
Emergency Warning (Red). An Emergency Warning is the highest level of warning. You may be in danger and need to take action immediately. Any delay now puts your life at risk.
The video below released December 1, 2020 describes the “New national approach to information and warnings during emergencies and natural disasters like bush fire, flood, storm, extreme heat and severe weather.”
Our take:
Standardizing the icons is a major improvement. However there is still opportunity for confusion about the difference between “Watch and Act” and “Emergency Warning”.
The United States could benefit from some of the lessons learned that are described in the Royal Commission’s report.
Sentintel-2 satellite imagery of the bushfire in Namadgi National Park south of Canberra, Australia. February 4, 2020.
As we reported in February, a helicopter operated by Australia’s Army inadvertently started a bushfire January 27, 2020 in Namadgi National Park south of Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It was caused by heat from the landing light on an MRH-90 Helicopter as it set down in the remote Orroral Valley for a crew break.
In the coming days, the Orroral Valley Fire grew very large, covered about 80 percent of the National Park, and crossed over into New South Wales where it burned homes. Wildfire Today’s very unofficial estimate based on satellite imagery is that the blaze burned over 250,000 acres.
New information uncovered by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reveals that the crew did not report the specific location of the fire until they landed 45 minutes later at Canberra Airport.
File photo of Royal Australian Navy NHI MRH-90 Helicopter. Photo by Duan Zhu.
From ABC:
When the blaze threatened to consume the aircraft, the crew took to the skies — only to watch as their helicopter downdraught fanned the flames into what would become a formidable firestorm.
But internal Defence reports on the incident, released to the ABC under Freedom of Information laws, show the helicopter’s pilot did not radio the coordinates in the timeit took to return to Fairbairn air baseat Canberra Airport.
That lack of information sowed confusion as ACT fire crews were dispatched to different parts of the park in a desperate scramble to locate and extinguish the blaze.
In documents obtained by the ABC under Freedom of Information laws, Defence made it clear the top priority for the helicopter crew was safety, given the aircraft had been damaged in the fire.
Today, in a statement from the Defence Minister’s office, Ms Reynolds defended the aircrew returning to Fairbairn air base at Canberra Airport before relaying the fire’s location to authorities.
She said the airport was the “nearest safe landing area with access to emergency services” for the fire-damaged aircraft.
“Defence advises that the crew were focussed on the immediate safety of the passengers and the flight emergency situation,” the statement from Ms Reynold’s office said.
“Defence advises that during the flight, the crew relayed the in-flight emergency situation to Canberra Air Traffic Control and their commanders.
“Immediately following an emergency landing at Canberra Airport, the aircrew passed the location of the fire to ACT Emergency Services Agency.”
The ACT’s Emergency Services Authority has said the Australian Defence Force’s actions were appropriate.
But others, including former ACT emergency services commissioner Peter Dunn, said the 45-minute delay robbed ACT emergency services of the crucial first hour to stop the fire from growing beyond control.
Today current ACT Emergency Services Commissioner Georgeina Whelan again defended the Army helicopter crew, saying they were following safety protocols.
But Ms Whelan acknowledged the 45-minute delay in firefighters being provided the location of the bushfire was “disappointing”.
“It is very disappointing and I know the entire Canberra community, as was I, we would love to have had information within seconds of that occurring,” she told ABC Radio Canberra.
“What we do know is the aircraft and the pilot focused on the safety of their team and got them back to the ACT airport very safely and we deployed our assets within a very short timeframe.
“It is very unfortunate, it was a really challenging season for all of us.
Sentintel-2 satellite imagery of the bushfire in Namadgi National Park south of Canberra, Australia. January 30, 2020.
