Tag: climate change

Climate change and wildfires

The New York Times has a very interesting article about the real effects of climate change, bringing the issue into the practical realm. Wildfires are playing and will continue to play an integral part. Here is an excerpt:

“The amount of area burning now in Siberia is just startling — individual years with 30 million acres burned,” Dr. Swetnam said, describing an area the size of Pennsylvania. “The big fires that are occurring in the American Southwest are extraordinary in terms of their severity, on time scales of thousands of years. If we were to continue at this rate through the century, you’re looking at the loss of at least half the forest landscape of the Southwest.”

Seasonal wildland firefighters arrested for drinking in front of fire station

Two wildland firefighters working for the Santa Fe Fire Department in New Mexico were arrested and fired for drinking beer in front of a fire station and on city property. Here is an excerpt from an article in the Albuquerque Journal:

Two seasonal employees for the Santa Fe Fire Department were arrested Wednesday night after police caught one of them, who is 19, drinking beer on city property. And he may have been noticed because that station is in the same area as the Santa Fe Police Department’s Professional Standards division.

“There’s police driving down the street all the time,” said Santa Fe police Capt. Aric Wheeler. “You’re rolling the dice thinking you’re not gonna be seen by somebody.”

An officer spotted Genaro Romero drinking a beer in front of the fire station at 2501 Camino Entrado just after 11 p.m. Wednesday. When the officer asked why he was drinking beer on city property, Romero said he was a firefighter. The officer then checked Romero’s identification and saw he was 19. Under questioning, Romero said he got the beer from Rene Arellano, 24, who was inside the building and admitted providing the booze, according to Wheeler.

Romero and Arellano were temporary firefighters for the city’s Wildland Fire Team. The two had been working as forestry technicians during the area’s wildfire season and their last day was scheduled for today, according to Santa Fe Fire Department Assistant Fire Chief Eric Litzenberg.

Until they were arrested Wednesday.

“They’re no longer employed by us,” said Litzenberg, who would not elaborate when asked if they were terminated.

Romero was arrested on a charge of minor in possession of alcohol, while Arellano was charged with providing alcohol to a minor, which is a felony, according to Wheeler.

Report: SEI to buy Premo

There is a report that SEI Industries is buying Premo. SEI makes Bambi Buckets and a line of aerial and ground-based ignition devices, Plastic Sphere Dispensers (PSD), and ignition spheres. SEI is is fairly new to the aerial ignition market. Premo has been making aerial ignition devices and ignition spheres used from helicopters for a long time. If the deal goes through, SEI will support and service the Premo PSD machines as well as supplying 1.25-inch spheres.

Trivia question

The death of which U. S. President’s father was related to a wildfire? The answer after the jump.
Continue reading “Wildfire news, October 1, 2011”

Chip Ward has written an opinion piece for CBSnews.com about the “monster” wildfires that have been turning large swaths of Texas and Arizona black over the last few months. From his home in Utah he does not really break much new ground, but he lays out the current situation in a style that makes it a worthwhile read.

Here is how the article begins:

Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It’s happening right here, right now.

Air tankers have been dropping fire retardant on what is being called the Wallow fire in Arizona and firefighting crews have been mobilized from across the West, but the fire remained “zero contained” for most of last week and only 18% so early in the new week, too big to touch with mere human tools like hoses, shovels, saws, and bulldozers. Walls of flame 100 feet high rolled over the land like a tsunami from Hades. The heat from such a fire is so intense and immense that it can create small tornadoes of red embers that cannot be knocked down and smothered by water or chemicals. These are not your grandfather’s forest fires.

Thanks Dick

Record-breaking fire years are occurring with increasing frequency in British Columbia, causing land managers to rethink how they manage their forests. The government has been maintaining wildlife corridors which it turns out, also provide paths for wildfires. The Forest Minister intends to modify their timber harvesting procedures, creating fire breaks in the wildlife corridors.

From the Vancouver Sun:

VANCOUVER — British Columbia Forest Minister Pat Bell has introduced an overhaul of the province’s wildfire strategy to take into account the increasing frequency and intensity of forest fires brought about by climate change.

The past two fire seasons have racked up bills between three and four times the long-term average cost for fighting fires in B.C., and the growing instability in local weather patterns means things will have to be done differently, Bell said in an interview.

“We need to start thinking about how we harvest our forests to minimize the ability of fire complexes to grow together.”

In July, several small fires in central B.C.’s Cariboo region linked together through wildlife corridors to form one large fire, forcing evacuations and a very expensive firefighting operation. Harvesting forests to create man-made breaks between stands of timber that mimic the natural fire breaks exploited by firefighters could help contain fires, Bell said.

The Wildfire Management Strategy notes that “record” fire years — as measured by area destroyed — are coming with increasing frequency.

Climate models predict more of the same as temperatures rise in the north and interior of the province.

And there is some evidence that measurable climate change is already here. Average temperatures recorded in Canada’s north this past summer are among the highest in 63 years of data collection, according to preliminary figures released by Environment Canada.