Wildfire news, November 24

Bill GabbertNovember 24, 2009August 25, 2019Uncategorizedbeetles, climate change, research, UAV, weather

Los Angeles County Fire Chief announces retirement.

P. Michael Freeman today announced that he will be retiring in March, 2010. Chief Freeman has served as Fire Chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department LACFD for 21 years.

On November 18 the LADFD issued a report about the Station fire that lobbed some criticism towards the U. S. Forest Service for their management of wildland fires.

NASA’s Predator UAV flies burn sites in California

NASA provided this information in a press release:

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MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA’s remotely piloted Predator B aircraft, named Ikhana, recently conducted post-burn assessments of two Southern California wildfire sites, the Piute Fire in Kern County and the Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest. Ikhana, an unmanned aircraft equipped with an infrared imaging sensor, completed a seven-hour imaging flight on Nov. 19, 2009 from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The Autonomous Modular Scanner, developed by NASA’s Ames ResearchCenter, Moffett Field, Calif., was carried in a pod under the aircraft’s wing. The scanner operates like a digital camera with specialized filters to detect light energy at visible, infrared and thermal wavelengths.

The scanner operated with a new photo mosaic capability requested by the U.S.Forest Service. A photo mosaic provides easier interpretation for the end user, which in the case of an active wildfire, is the fire incident commander.

Traveling northwest of NASA Dryden, the aircraft flew several data collectionroutes over the area burned by the month-long Piute Fire in Kern County that grew to 37,026 acres before it was contained in July 2008. The burn area is located in the Sequoia National Forest and on Bureau of Land Management public land near Lake Isabella.

Ikhana then traveled southeast to fly image collection routes over the arson-caused Station Fire. It burned more than 160,000 acres in the Angeles National Forest northeast of Los Angeles after being ignited on Aug. 26, 2009. The scanner collected images that will indicate the severity of devastation within the fire area. Another use of the images is for the U.S. Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation, or BAER.

The Forest Service uses BAER to reduce further damage to land made unstable by fires, rather than replace what is burned. The BAER data are derived using multi-spectral data available from the Autonomous Modular Scanner on the aircraft. The processes can be changed mid-mission to enable improved collection of critical information, either in mapping active fires or assessing post-burn severity.

The post-burn images collected by the scanner were transmitted through a communications satellite to NASA Ames, where the images were superimposed over Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth maps to better visualize the locations. The images then were made available to the Forest Service for initial assessment of the damage caused by the fires and rehabilitation required.

Scientists prove mega-droughts occurred

By studying mineral deposits in caves, scientists have proved that extended droughts, or “mega-droughts” have occurred hundreds of years ago. The researchers took core samples of deposits left by dripping water in caves, and studied them much like scientists study tree rings to determine fire history.

Their analysis in caves in the Sierra Nevada in California determined that one of the droughts they detected lasted 140-years around the year 1100. The pattern of droughts seems to be associated with rapid climate warming.

Bushfires wreaking havoc in Australia

From The Trumpet:

Thousands of homes are threatened by huge wildfires sweeping across eastern Australia. Record temperatures and persistent winds have combined to make this the worst bushfire threat in 100 years in New South Wales, just months after the country’s most devastating wildfire disaster to date.

The record heat has kindled fears of a repeat of February’s cataclysmic fires in Victoria that killed 173 people and consumed more than 2,000 homes. The conditions have prompted authorities to issue the first “catastrophic” or “Code Red” alert—a new level of warning introduced since the deadly Black Saturday fires in February—for parts of New South Wales and South Australia.

“The very hot temperatures we’ve seen across New South Wales right throughout this last week are simply breaking hundred-year records,” said Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

In a Code Red warning, residents cannot be forcibly evacuated, but are strongly advised to leave their property because of the dire risk of death, injury and destruction.

Fire expert Kevin Tolhurst said, “What we saw on (Black Saturday) was an extraordinary day from a weather point of view. We are starting to see those sort of days more frequently.”

Bill introduced in Senate to aid in control of pine beetles

From KPVI news:

U.S. Sen. Mark Udall says the insect infestation killing millions of pine trees in the West is 1 of the region’s “biggest natural disasters.”

The Colorado Democrat said Monday he has introduced a bill to give forest managers more ways to respond.

The bill, co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, would allow the U.S. Forest Service to identify high-priority areas and expedite analysis of proposed treatments.

More than 2.5 million acres of pine trees in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming have been killed by tiny beetles that burrow under the bark.

Forest managers say the outbreak poses wildfire and public safety risks.

A national management team will help the Forest Service coordinate responses to the outbreak.

As we reported on November 11, one of the NIMO teams has been activated to assist in battling beetles.

Fewer inmates could hamper fire suppression in California

The state of California is under a court order to reduce their prison population by 40,000 people, from 150,000 to 110,000. In order to comply, Governor Schwarzenegger is seeking legislation to implement alternatives to state incarceration, such as house arrest or utilizing local jails.

A reduction of this size in low risk inmates will mean there will be fewer prisoners available to staff the state’s Type 2 inmate crews. When working on a fire an inmate earns $1 per hour, much less than a CalFire employee, so replacing the crews with CalFire firefighters is not an option in a state with major financial problems.

The reason the court ordered a reduction in the prison population was to improve the treatment of physically and mentally ill inmates. They labeled the care so poor that it violates an inmate’s constitutional rights.

Climate change researchers: Yosemite NP to have 19% more fires

BillNovember 2, 2009November 20, 2009Uncategorizedclimate change, research, weather

According to researchers who published a recent paper in the International Journal of Wildland Fire (Volume 18[7] 2009), climate change will increase the number and burn severity of fires in Yosemite National Park. Using fire records, weather data, and satellite imagery they analyzed the fires in the park that occurred between 1984 and 2005. Comparing snowfall records with fire severity, they determined that during those years, decreased spring snowpack exponentially increased the number of lightning-ignited fires and the proportion of the landscape that burned at higher severities.

The researchers then made some predictions:

Using one snowpack forecast, we project that the number of lightning-ignited fires will increase 19.1% by 2020 to 2049 and the annual area burned at high severity will increase 21.9%. Climate-induced decreases in snowpack and the concomitant increase in fire severity suggest that existing assumptions may be understated – fires may become more frequent and more severe.

Here is the way this is supposed to work. There is some evidence to suggest that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will lead to more lightning strikes. With less snow, the lightning strikes are more likely to ignite fires. The dryer fuels will result in the fires burning more intensely.

UPDATE, November 5, 2009:

The authors of the report are James A. Lutz, Jan W. van Wagtendonk, Andrea E. Thode, Jay D. Miller, and Jerry F. Franklin. They are employed by the National Park Service, the U. S. Forest Service, the University of Washington, and Northern Arizona University.

They chose to publish the results of their taxpayer-funded research in a publication that is not accessible to taxpayers unless they pay substantial subscription or membership fees to the International Journal of Wildland Fire or the International Association of Wildland fire. IAWF members after paying their membership fee can access the content of the Journal.

We have written about this issue before. If you want a copy of this taxpayer-funded research, you can pay the fees, or you can email James A. Lutz at jlutz@u.washington.edu and ask him for a copy.

Vegetation could override climate change effects on wildfires

BillApril 21, 2009November 28, 2009Uncategorizedclimate change, research

Ben Clegg and study co-authors Linda Brubaker and Feng Sheng Hu collect sediment cores from a lake in the Brooks Range, AK. (Credit: Philip Higuera)

It seems to be the conventional wisdom that climate change, in this case warmer temperatures, will lead to (or has led to) more fires and more acres burned. And that may be the case in the short term, but a new study shows that over the last 15,000 years warmer temperatures resulted in changes to vegetation types with more resistance to wildfires–at least in Alaska.

The research was led by Philip Higuera of Montana State University who examined historical fire frequency in northern Alaska by analyzing sediments at the bottom of lakes. The cores they took showed changes in plant parts, pollen, and accumulations of charcoal deposits. From this they could determine vegetation type and fire frequency which they then compared to known historical climate changes.

They found that climate change involving warmer temperatures caused the vegetation to change from flammable shrubs to more fire-resistant deciduous trees.

Higuera concludes:

Climate affects vegetation, vegetation affects fire, and both fire and vegetation respond to climate change. Most importantly, our work emphasizes the need to consider the multiple drivers of fire regimes when anticipating their response to climate change.

From Ecological Society of America (2009, April 21). Plants Could Override Climate Change Effects On Wildfires. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 21, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/04/090421111701.htm

Wildfire news, March 13, 2009

BillMarch 13, 2009November 11, 2020Uncategorizedclimate change, Joe Biden

Sen. Carper selected to co-chair fire caucus

Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) has been named to one of the co-chair positions on the Congressional Fire Services Caucus, filling the position vacated by Vice President Joe Biden. During a speech at the Delaware Fire school, Carper said:

I am proud to have the opportunity to continue Delaware’s long tradition of leadership on fire issues in Washington. I have always enjoyed working with and for the men and women in Delaware who serve their neighbors and their communities as firefighters. I look forward to deepen that relationship in the coming years as a co-chair of the Congressional Fire Services Caucus.

Others serving as co-chairs are Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Congressmen Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.).

Fighting fire on slopes of volcano in Guatemala

Untrained firefighters suppressing a fire on the slopes of Volcano Santo Tomas in Guatemala.

From The Guatemala Times:

Guatemala, Sololá- Urgent help is needed to fight the wildfire that began a month ago on the slopes of Volcano Santo Tomas in Xejuyup, Nahualá, Sololá, 3.5 hours drive from Guatemala City, still has not been brought under control. 35,550 residents in 19 communities have been going through more than two weeks of emergency with no drinking water available.

The fire on the slope of the volcano began February 10 and is approximately 6 to 10 hours away from the surrounding communities. Local authorities have been alarmed but little has been done to help. The communities have been organizing themselves, 1,500 untrained firefighters, into groups to make rounds to control the fire.

To date the fire has destroyed an estimated 2,965 acres of forest and habitats of species and individuals on this coffee-growing highland. The National System for Prevention and Control of Forest (Sipecif) sent out 75 people to monitor the situation but so far has been unable to control the fire. Appeals have been made to the Governor of Sololá, authorities in Santa Catarina Nahualá and Ixtahuacán, and the central government.

“The Guatemalan government coordinated with the Mexican government to send two helicopters to conduct an evaluation, but nothing has been done to control the fire,” says Axtup. “Our community firefighters walk six hours on foot to the place of the fire incidents. Without the right tools and expertise, it’s almost impossible to do it all by ourselves.”

Juniper fire on Ocala National Forest grows to 3,500 acres

Brush engines on Forest Road 65 working on the Juniper fire near Juniper Springs. Photo: Doug Engle, Ocala.com

The Juniper fire, near Juniper Sprins on the Ocala National Forest in Florida, started on March 10 and has now burned 3,500 acres and is 15% contained. The fire started from an escaped campfire and tripled in size during the last 24 hours. Three people were issued mandatory appearance citations for allowing their campfire to escape. The area has not received any rain for at least 22 days.

Shortly after the fire started, the Blue Type 1 Incident Management Team from the southeast geographical area was ordered, but that order was cancelled on March 11.

Fire season predictions

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson says it will be a tough fire season because much of his state has received little to no precipitation since the first of the year. The dry conditions have contributed to 38,610 acres burned since January 1. State fire leaders told the Governor Thursday during a briefing that the weather conditions and predictions are dire.

Esperanza fire penalty hearing

The penalty hearing, which is expected to last 2 weeks, continued on Thursday with Chief Bradley Harris from CalFire reconstructing the movements of some of the victims, the crew of USFS Engine 57 that died in the fire set intentionally by Raymond Oyler, convicted of murder and setting the fire.

Harris said, for instance, that Daniel Hoover-Najera ran for “well over 30 seconds” before he succumbed to the flames.

Several relatives of the deceased firefighters testified about their loved ones and the impacts on their personal lives since their loss.

From the Press-Enterprise:

On Thursday, Riverside County Superior Court Judge W. Charles Morgan ordered jail personnel to make sure Oyler was getting his prescribed medication. Defense attorney Mark McDonald said his client had not been receiving the medicine recently because Oyler arrived back at the jail from the courthouse after the dispensary had been issued.

A court-appointed psychologist this week said Oyler was competent to stand for the penalty phase of his trial.

During the week, Oyler displayed twitching movements at the counsel table. He also muttered to himself, sometimes asked his attorneys whispered questions, and at other times appeared heavy-lidded and on the verge of sleep.

McDonald said his client received his medication on Wednesday night and seemed to be faring better on Thursday. Oyler takes anti-depressant and anti-tremor medications, among others.

The hearing will resume on Monday.

Global Temperature

The global average temperature in 2008 was the coolest in 10 years, but it was still the ninth warmest year since continuous instrumental records were started in 1880. Those who deny that global warming exists don’t realize the debate ended 10 years ago.

Petition signers opposed prescribed burning because of “beautification of our natural lands”

A District Ranger and a Fire Management Officer from the Cherokee National Forest in eastern Tennessee held a public meeting about their planned prescribed burns, but only two members of the public showed up.

However, Danny Price, a field representative for U.S. Rep. Phil Rowe was there and presented a petition signed by 123 citizens opposed to prescribed fire, which said:

“We, the undersigned, are opposed to the prescribed and control burning of U.S. Forest Service property … Due to strong south winds, the burning would affect elderly people, as well as close proximity to dwelling houses, churches, the home for children, the Oaks Family Conference Center and Campground, schools, small game, trees that young animals are born in, not to mention the beautification of our natural lands.”

In spite of the low attendance, the DR and the FMO put on a full-blown presentation about the merits of prescribed burning.

The Greeneville Sun has more details.

Thanks Dick

Climate change and larger fires

BillNovember 30, 2008March 23, 2019Uncategorizedclimate change, research

The Sacramento Bee has an interesting article about how climate change is affecting wildland fires. Here is an excerpt.

Wildfire has marched across the West for centuries. But no longer are major conflagrations fueled simply by heavy brush and timber. Now climate change is stoking the flames higher and hotter, too.

That view, common among firefighters, is reflected in new studies that tie changing patterns of heat and moisture in the western United States to an unprecedented rash of costly and destructive wildfires.

Among other things, researchers have found the frequency of wildfire increased fourfold – and the terrain burned expanded sixfold – as summers grew longer and hotter over the past two decades.

The fire season now stretches out 78 days longer than it did during the 1970s and ’80s. And, on average, large fires burn for more than a month, compared with just a week a generation ago.

Scientists also have discovered that in many places, nothing signals a bad fire year like a short winter and an early snowmelt. Overall, 72 percent of the land scorched across the West from 1987 to 2003 burned in early snowmelt years.

Across the Sierra, satellite imagery shows that today’s wildfires are far more destructive than fires of the past, leaving larger portions of the burned landscape looking like nuclear blast zones. That searing intensity, in turn, is threatening water quality, wildlife habitat, rural and resort communities and firefighter lives.

As the climate warms, the ability of the region’s mixed conifer forest ecosystem to recover from these destructive fires is in danger.

“We’re getting into a place where we are almost having a perfect storm” for wildfire, said Jay Miller, a U.S. Forest Service researcher and lead author of a recent paper published in the scientific journal Ecosystems linking climate change to the more severe fires in the Sierra.

“We have increased fuels, but this changing climate is adding an additional stress on the whole situation,” Miller said. “When things get bad, things will get much worse.”

Longer, more intense fire seasons

That future may already have arrived. This year, the fire season got off to an early June start in the north state and only recently came to a close. Statewide, 1.4 million acres burned in 2008, just shy of last year’s 1.5 million acres, the highest total in at least four decades.

“When I started fighting fire, the normal fire season was from the beginning of June to the end of September,” said Pete Duncan, a fuels management officer for the Plumas National Forest. “Now we are bringing crews on in the middle of April and they are working into November and December.”

“And we’re seeing fires now burning in areas that normally we wouldn’t consider a high-intensity burn situation.”

Just a few weeks ago, Duncan heard about one such incident: the Panther fire on the Klamath National Forest near the Oregon border.

“It made an eight-mile run one afternoon, in late October. It burned through an area of fairly high elevation old-growth timber and at very high severity,” Duncan said.

“I was kind of amazed,” he added, “that something would have burned to that scale. To make a 40,000-acre run in an afternoon is significant for any time of year – but particularly for that time of year.”

Researchers: Expect more fires

BillSeptember 25, 2008August 25, 2019Uncategorizedclimate change, research, weather

From the Billings Gazette:

JACKSON, WYOMING – Now might be a good time to get into the firefighting business.

If science and history are a guide, the world and particularly the Rocky Mountain West are poised on the cusp of a dangerous increase in the size and frequency of large fires, caused by a warming climate.

“By the end of this century we’re expecting the area in Canada that burns to double,” said Mike Flannigan, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. “Others say it will be a change of three to five times. It looks pretty gloomy.”

An increasing risk of large fires may not be news to landowners and homeowners who have been scorched by recent blazes. But speakers at a conference here Wednesday put a finer point on the idea, backing it up with reams of charts and boat loads of scientific research outlined in PowerPoint presentations.

El Cariso Hot Shots catch their breath after being chased out of a fire on the San Bernardino National Forest, 1972. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

Flannigan is one of many researchers who spoke Wednesday at a weeklong conference titled “The ’88 Fires, Yellowstone and Beyond,” co-sponsored by the National Park Service and the International Association of Wildland Fire. Many of Wednesday’s talks focused on climate change and its effects on wildfires.

[…]

Based on data already compiled, the West is on the front of a rising curve for more large fires. Research by Anthony Westerling, of the University of California-Merced, showed that fires more than 500 acres in size have increased by 300 percent since 1985 on National Park Service, Forest Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs lands.

Westerling examined how rising temperatures have affected earlier spring runoffs and in many cases led to warmer, drier summers. His studies showed that between 1970 and 2008, there has been a 78-day increase in the fire season. The average burn time for fires has risen from one week to five weeks.

Projecting his data into the future, Westerling sees the average fire year between 2072 and 2099 looking similar in moisture deficit to Yellowstone National Park in 1988, when 794,000 acres burned.

“This is assuming we keep producing as much CO2,” he said. “I can’t get a sense of how you would manage yourself out of this change.”

Fire managers note that they’re already seeing unusual fire behavior.

Steve Frye, of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said, “We are experiencing extreme, aggressive fire behavior in places where we haven’t in the past,” including fires at elevations and in fuel types where fires didn’t used to burn.

Fighting such fires has become more complicated, he said, thanks in large part to the construction of houses near forests, which he called “the single largest challenge and change for fire managers in the last 20 years.”

Meanwhile, firefighting agencies have had to deal with a decline in the number of firefighters and equipment used to battle blazes. Agencies would need twice the resources they now have to keep fires at current levels, something that’s not going to happen. So fire managers have had to adapt.

“We are making better decisions in how we assign our resources,” Frye said. “But we’re also assigning units to protection that could be used elsewhere.”

Flannigan, the Canadian researcher, said the situation north of the border could well apply to the Western United States.

“It’s almost a given that we’ll see more fire activity, more ignitions,” he said. “This is a global problem, and it’s going to require global solutions.”