Wildfire Today

News and opinion about wildland fire

Wildfire Today

Tag: climate change

Wildfire briefing, November 19, 2012

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , 4 Comments on Wildfire briefing, November 19, 2012

Firefighters discover dog fighting operation

Hawkins Co Fire in Tn, Photo by Hawkins Co EMA
Fire in Hawkins County, Tennessee. Photo by Hawkins County Emergency Management Agency

Firefighters working to put out a wildfire near Rogersville, Tennessee had to suspend their suppression operations after they discovered a facility threatened by the fire that housed dogs and roosters used for dog and cock fighting. Firefighters rescued about 40 of the animals. Here is an excerpt from an article in the Times News:

Hawkins County Sheriff Ronnie Lawson told the Times-News Sunday the suspected operation is now the subject of a criminal investigation, and although no arrests had been made he hoped to be able to release more information about that on Monday.

Murrell added, “It put a damper on the firefighting efforts last (Saturday) night because everybody had to pull off until we found out what it was. Then it took most available law enforcement and fire (personnel) to try to get all the dogs out.”

As of Sunday night the fire, which started on Thursday, had burned about 1,800 acres.

Petition to hire the DC-10 air tankers

The managers of the Facebook page for the DC-10 air tankers have organized a petition drive designed to convince the US Forest Service to award a long-term contract for the DC-10s. More information is at our Fire Aviation web site.

Coal seam fire burns 1,000 acres

A wildfire that started from a mostly underground fire in a coal seam has burned 1,000 acres of land in Boone County, West Virginia. Firefighters are suppressing the fire using leaf blowers, rakes, and dozers. Trees that were down as a result of a summer wind storm and then Hurricane Sandy have added fuel to the fire and complicated access to the area. We have reported on numerous other coal seam fires over the years.

Pole Creek Fire affected the economy of Sisters, Oregon

Some wildfires may enhance the economy of a rural area by spending money at local businesses. But too often tourists stay away in droves or in the case of the Pole Creek Fire near Sisters, Oregon, population 2,000, the dense smoke in the community forced some residents to temporarily leave the area. An article in a Firewise publication reported that even though 800 firefighters were housed at an incident base a few miles down the road, in September restaurants had their revenue decrease by 40 to 50 percent. Stores saw less business and motels experienced reservation cancellations up to five weeks out.

In September we reported on a study about the economic effects of large wildfires which showed that on average, the US Forest Service spent six percent of wildfire suppression funding in the county where the fires occurred. Amounts of local spending varied from zero to 25 percent.

The Pole Cree Fire started from lightning on September 9 and burned 26,795 acres before it was contained October 20.

Fire management decisions affect local communities

When land management agencies make decisions about using less than aggressive initial attack strategies, attempt to manage fires “on the cheap”,  or allow a fire to burn naturally for weeks or months, they may not accurately realize the long term economic and health effects those decisions can have on the local population. These may or may not have been issues in the management of the Pole Creek Fire, but they are too often mentioned as factors that have crept into fire management over the last decade.

World Bank says temperatures may rise 7.2 degrees

The World Bank reported that the planet may see temperatures rise by 4 degrees Celsius, or about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, resulting in more wildfires, extreme heat waves, a decline in food supplies and a ‘life-threatening’ rise in sea level.

 

Thanks go out to Dick

Wildfire news, October 6, 2012

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , ,

Idaho Governor has recommendations on how to reduce damage from wildfires

The Governor of Idaho, C.L. “Butch” Otter, in an opinion article published under his name, has some recommendations about how to reduce the adverse impacts from wildfires. They include more roads, grazing, and logging.

Smoke from Idaho’s Mustang Fire had elevated levels of radiation

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality tested the air quality near the Mustang Fire and said that even though they found “definitely elevated” levels of radiation, it did not pose a risk to human health. The air samples were obtained in the nearby town of North Fork. As Wildfire Today told you on September 21, the fire burned through four former mining sites that had traces of radioactive uranium and thorium.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

…Paul Ritter, health physicist with the state environmental agency, said in the area of the mining sites, smoke from the fire showed amounts of radiation roughly equivalent to emissions from a fire in 2000 that charred parts of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nuclear weapons design facility in New Mexico.

“The readings are definitely elevated but not out of line with what has been measured in fires before. It is not a risk,” he said.

Americans are exposed to an estimated 310 millirems of radiation a year from natural sources, including some rocks and soils, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

An analysis of air samples in North Fork showed residents would have been exposed to 0.5 millirems of radiation in a 30-day period. That compares to a dose of 5 millirems delivered by a round-trip transcontinental flight, Ritter said.

Utah students influence legislation about wildfires

Some high school students in Utah who were interested in the effects of climate change talked to state Representative Kraig Powell, who, according to a report in Power Engineering:

…has opened a bill file for legislation that would examine how climate change is expected to drive more and bigger wildfires and to begin planning for future wildfire fighting and suppression costs.

In early meetings with Powell, [the students] shared some of what they had learned about wildfire in Utah. For instance, they told how the state already has seen 400,000 acres burned this year with suppression costs of $47.1 million — part of a trend prompted by record hot and dry periods.

They also told how rehabilitating burned areas often costs more than fighting the wildfire itself. Their example? The 2007 Milford Flat fire which racked up a $5 million bill for suppression, while rehabilitating the scarred forest and range cost $17 million.

That’s what led to the concept for the bill, which is currently being drafted by the Legislature’s lawyers.

“I’ve been learning a lot,” Powell said. “It’s not a simple science.”

Meth production may have caused brush fire

Michigan State Police are investigating a small wildfire that may have originated from an attempt to cook meth in Marquette Township.

Fires have gotten larger since 1970

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 1 Comment on Fires have gotten larger since 1970

We can debate the reasons for it, but there is no question that over the last 40 years the average size of wildfires has increased. The data we collected from the National Interagency Fire Center when grouped by decade shows that the average size of fires between 1970 and 2009 has more than quadrupled.

Ave size of wildfire by decade, 1970-2009Climate Central has also noticed this and issued a report about the change in fire activity over the last 42 years. Here are some highlights:

  • The National Research Council reports that for every degree Celsius (1.8°F) of temperature increase, the size of the area burned in the Western U.S. could quadruple.
  • For the last decade, compared to the 1970s, there were 7 times more fires greater than 10,000 acres and nearly 5 times more fires larger than 25,000 acres each year.
  • Since the 1970s the average number of fires over 1,000 acres each year has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho, and has doubled in California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.
  • The burn season is two and a half months longer than 40 years ago.
  • Rising spring and summer temperatures across the West appear to be correlated to the increasing size and numbers of wildfires. Spring and summer temperatures have increased more rapidly across this region than the rest of the country, in recent decades. Since 1970, years with above-average spring and summer temperatures were typically years with the biggest wildfires.

In spite of this clear trend of increasing wildfires, Congress and the Administration have been reducing the budgets of the federal land management agencies, and have cut the number of large air tankers on exclusive use contracts by 80 percent since 2002, from 44 to 9. However, seven more air tankers may be added over the next year, bringing the total to 16. William Scott, a fire aviation expert who also has experience in the National Security Agency, thinks that terrorists could, and perhaps already are waging economic war inside the United State by starting wildfires which can cost the government and residents billions of dollars.

 
Thanks go out to Kelly

Wildfire news, September 11, 2012

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , 1 Comment on Wildfire news, September 11, 2012
American Flag
Photo by Bill Gabbert

Eleven years ago…..

Today, eleven years after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, we will pause for a minute to remember those firefighters and other citizens who lost their lives that day……………….

Next Generation legged robots

We first wrote about these “robot dogs” in 2009, and now DARPA has developed the next generation of these machines that are designed to “unburden dismounted [military] squad members by carrying their gear, autonomously following them through rugged terrain, and interpreting verbal and visual commands.”

DARPA's legged robots

I wonder how much water or fire hose these critters can carry?

Amazing air tanker photo

One of the best photos ever taken of an air tanker drop was taken by Kent Porter at the Scotts fire in northern California and can be found at the San Francisco Chronicle web site.

California fire protection fee

The San Francisco Chronicle also has an article that updates the situation in which California owners of habitable structures in areas where the state is responsible for fire prevention must pay a $150 fee. Lawsuits may be filed. Of course.

New map of all large fires this year

The Associated Press has an interesting map that supposedly shows all of the large fires that have occurred this year.

Atomic scientists weigh in on climate change and wildland fires

A publication titled Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published an article written by Max Moritz, of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management in the College of Natural Resources at University of California, Berkeley. (I wonder if all that fits on a business card?) Mr. Moritz writes about how climate change will affect wildland fires and the population. It does not exactly break new ground, with the recommendations being communities should be fire-resistant and we must learn to coexist again with wildfire.

Thanks go out to Kelly

Our disappearing forests and the fires of 1748

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 5 Comments on Our disappearing forests and the fires of 1748
Whitewater-Baldy June 2, 2012 Photo by Kari Greer-USFS
Whitewater-Baldy fire, June 2, 2012. Photo by Kari Greer/USFS

In the southwest United States 1748 was a very active year for wildland fires. According to Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey in Los Alamos, New Mexico, “Every mountain range we studied in the region was burning that year”. But in spite of there being no debate or controversy about “let burn”, suppress every fire by 10 a.m., budget cuts, or air tankers, the forests survived. Not only did they survive, they thrived.

There are two reasons why the fires of 1748 had a different effect than the fires of the last 15 years.

One is tree density. In 1748 there were about 80 trees per acre. Frequent low-intensity fires maintained this stocking level, reducing regeneration, ladder fuels, and dead wood on the forest floor. Fires spread slowly and for the most part stayed on the ground without turning into crown fires. Today’s forests have about 1,000 trees per acre and sanitizing fires are no longer a part of the equation, making it much more likely that a ground fire will leap into the canopy and become a tree-killing conflagration.

The second reason is climate change. Higher temperatures along with more frequent droughts have caused heat stress on forests making them less resistant to attacks by fire and insects.

Dr. Allen’s research indicates that these conditions have brought us to a situation with increased tree mortality and forests that are less likely to regenerate. In some areas trees are being replaced by shrub lands.

The New York Times interviewed Dr. Allen. Here is an excerpt from their article:

But beginning in 1900, when railroads enabled the spread of livestock, cattle devoured the grassy surface fuels and the fire cycle stopped. A decade later, a national policy of forest fire suppression formalized this new normal. Over the next century, forest density went from 80 trees pr acre to more than 1,000.

Then in 1996, the climate emerged from a wet cycle into a dry one — part of a natural cycle for this region. Winters became drier. And “we immediately began seeing major fires,” Dr. Allen said.

With so many trees crammed into the forest, fires climbed straight to the canopy instead of remaining on the ground.

“These forests did not evolve with this type of fire,” said Dr. Allen. “Fire was a big deal in New Mexico, but it was a different kind of fire.” The result, he said, is that the species that now live there — ponderosa pines, piñon, juniper — cannot regenerate, and new species are moving in to take their place.

“Ecosystems are already resetting themselves in ways big and small,” Dr. Allen said. The challenge for managing these ecosystems, he said, is to try to help them adapt.

Seeking to preserve existing systems is futile, he said.