Wildfires and other fire incidents

[weatheriscool]

Approaching storm complicates California wildfire fight (UPDATED)

Last edited Fri Sep 9, 2022, 02:45 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: AP

By JULIE WATSON and JOHN ANTCZAK

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Firefighters struggling to control raging California wildfires faced a new threat Friday as a tropical storm approached from the south with gusty winds and a surge of moisture that forecasters warned could unleash heavy rains and flash floods.

East winds were rising at the deadly Fairview Fire in Southern California and firefighters worried that gusts would push the fire west, casting embers far ahead and igniting new blazes.

The fire covered about 43 square miles (111 square kilometers) of Riverside County and was just 5% contained. Two people died while fleeing on Monday and at least 12 structures have been destroyed. More than 18,000 homes were threatened.

To the north in the Sierra Nevada, the Mosquito Fire burned out of control, scorching at least 22 square miles (57 square kilometers) and threatening 3,600 homes in Placer and El Dorado counties, while blanketing the region in smoke.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-fi ... 00ef9af581

[weatheriscool]

Bolt Creek Fire near Skykomish prompts evacuations, road closures
Source: KIRO 7 News

SKYKOMISH, Wash. — The Bolt Creek Fire, which started north of Skykomish on early Saturday morning, has grown to approximately 2,000 acres, according to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.

A Level 3 evacuation — meaning to leave now — has been issued for residents north of Highway 2, from Skykomish to Index, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office. Specifically, evacuations are in place from Eagle Falls on the west end to Beckler River Road on the east.

There is also a Level 2 evacuation in place for Index, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. This is an evacuation warning or notice and residents in this area should prepare for a high probability of a need to evacuate.

A Level 1 evacuation is in place for Skykomish, according to Snohomish County Fire District 26.

Read more: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/wildfi ... V3WP5DZRI/

[caltrek]

Swelling Mosquito Fire Now California's Largest Wildfire This Year
by Sareen Habeshian and Rebecca Falconer
September 15, 2022

Introduction:

(Axios) Northern California's Mosquito Fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills swelled to 63,776 acres on Wednesday evening after "critically dry fuels" drove rapid growth, per Cal Fire.

Threat level: Evacuation orders and warnings remained in place for affected communities northeast of Sacramento as the blaze burned across El Dorado and Placer counties at 20% containment and became the largest recorded in California this year.

• As poor air quality looms, schools in the area halted in-person classes, including in the Washoe County School District, The University of Nevada, Reno and Truckee Meadows Community College, AP reports.

State of play: Lighter southwesterly winds than Tuesday helped clear some of the air in fire-affected areas and firefighters were holding the Mosquito Fire inside control lines with the help of cooler temperatures and higher humidity, according to Cal Fire's incident report.

Yes, but: "The fire remains active on this eastern front, steadily burning and advancing in heavy unburned fuels," Cal Fire said.

Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/09/15/calif ... this-year

[caltrek]

People Across America Are Choking on Wildfire Smoke
by Oliver Milman
September 24, 2022

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) Millions of Americans are now routinely exposed to unhealthy plumes of wildfire smoke that can waft thousands of miles across the country, scientists have warned.

Wildfires cause soot and ash to be thrown off into the air, which then carries the minuscule particles that can be inhaled by people many miles away, aggravating a variety of health conditions. The number of people in the US exposed to unhealthy levels of these particulates from wildfires at least one day a year has increased 27-fold over the last decade, a new study found, with 25 million people in 2020 alone breathing in potentially toxic air from fires.

Pockets of deeply unhealthy air have emerged mainly in the US west, the staging ground for wildfires of increasing intensity that have been fueled by years of fire suppression and global heating, priming forests to burn. Six of the seven largest wildfires in California’s recorded history have occurred since 2020.

Wildfire smoke can result in the closure of schools, the postponement of flights and even cause cycling races and Pearl Jam concerts to be canceled. But its most pervasive impact is a regression in air quality barely seen since the advent of the Clean Air Act in 1970, which helped lift dangerous, choking smog conditions from many polluted US cities.

“We are seeing the undoing of a lot of that clean air progress, especially in the west,” said Marshall Burke, a scientist at Stanford University and co-author of the study published in Environmental Science and Technology.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... ty-study/

[Time_Traveller]

Easter Island fire causes ‘irreparable’ damage to famous moai statues

Fri 7 Oct 2022

A forest fire that tore through part of Easter Island has charred some of its monumental carved stone figures, known as moai, authorities have said.

The blaze reportedly swept through the Rapa Nui national park, 3,500km (2,175 miles) off the west coast of Chile, causing “irreparable” damage to the archaeological site.

“More than 100 hectares (247 acres) were affected in the Rano Raraku sector which includes the wetland and moai sector,” the national park said in a statement on its official Facebook page on Thursday.

Carolina Perez, cultural heritage undersecretary, said the island - which lies 3,500km (2,175 miles) off the west coast of Chile - had been razed by flames since Monday.

Rapa Nui has more than 1,000 stone statues – giant heads that are believed to have first been carved in the 13th century by the island’s original inhabitants. The area around the Rano Raraku volcano, a Unesco world heritage site, was reportedly the most affected.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... ai-statues

[caltrek]

What Does Forest Restoration in the U.S. Southwest Look Like in the Age of Climate Change
by Jim O’Donnell
October 19, 2022

Introduction:

(Ensia) On April 6, 2022, a prescribed fire driven by unusually strong spring winds jumped a control line northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico. About two weeks later, the same dry winds rekindled embers from another nearby prescribed burn. Driven by 60-mile-per-hour (27-meter-per-second) winds with gusts reaching upwards of 80 miles per hour (36 meters per second), the two fires merged, and the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak complex became the largest in New Mexico history. By the time the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) declared the fire contained in late August, almost 350,000 acres (141,600 hectares), an area greater than the size of Los Angeles, had burned. Nearly 1,000 structures were destroyed and thousands of people were displaced. Post-fire flooding killed multiple area residents and caused extensive damage.

While fire is an integral part of Southwest forest ecosystems, a century of policies geared toward fire suppression in the American West that has led to a lack of diversity is colliding with climate change, upending the rules. Historically, a mature forest would burn, then, over time, return to a healthy, recognizable state. Today, however, an unprecedented decades-long drought, rising temperatures and massive insect outbreaks are hammering forests across the region, creating ideal conditions for megafires like the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak inferno.

Thanks to climate change, experts say many southwestern forests destroyed by megafires may never return. Conditions across the region have become too hot and too dry for normal forest succession, and wildfires such as Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak are a catalyst for rapid change to an entirely different ecosystem. Forests can become fire- and flood-prone shrubland, and shrubland can become grassland dominated by invasive species such as cheat grass that likes to burn.

“All bets are off,” says Thomas Swetnam, Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona. “I hate to sound apocalyptic, but these are shocking, extraordinary events. The forests we had are not going to come back.”

Read more here: https://ensia.com/features/forest-fire ... -drought/

[caltrek]

University of Montana Research Chronicles Forest Recovery After Montana’s 2017 Fire Season

October 24, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) For a researcher who studies wildfire, University of Montana graduate student Kyra Clark-Wolf couldn’t have had better timing.
Clark-Wolf arrived in Missoula to start her graduate studies on the impacts of wildfires on forests at the W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation on July 4, 2017. Eleven days later, a lightning strike sparked the Lolo Peak Fire just south of the city, burning nearly 54,000 acres and leaving lasting and indelible images among Missoulians of dense smoke and flames visible from town.

The impacts of that fire on the forest, as well as the Sunrise Fire burning at the same time west of Missoula, would go on to be central to Clark-Wolf’s doctoral work. Her findings are shared in two papers, the second recently published in Forest Ecology and Management, a leading journal in her field.

“I was curious once the smoke cleared up what was going on in the forest and what the fires left behind,” she said, “and how the effects of ongoing climate change could change forest recovery.”

With support from her adviser, Philip Higuera, professor and director of UM’s PaleoEcology and Fire Ecology Lab, and Kim Davis, a UM research scientist, Clark-Wolf applied for $25,000 in research funding from the federal Joint Fire Science Program and proposed to study how burned landscapes find life again.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968951

Abstract:

(Forest Ecology and Management) Climate warming and an increased frequency and severity of wildfires are expected to transform forest ecosystems, in part through altered post-fire vegetation trajectories. Such a loss of forest resilience to wildfires arises due to a failure to pass though one or more critical demographic stages, or “filters,” including seed availability, germination, establishment, and survival. Here we quantify the relative influence of microclimate and microsite conditions on key stages of post-fire seedling demography in two large, lightning-ignited wildfires from the regionally extensive fire season of 2017 in the northern Rocky Mountains, U.S.A. We tracked conifer seedling density, survival, and growth in the first three years post-fire in 69 plots spanning gradients in fire severity, topography, and climate; all plots were limited to within 100 m of a seed source to assure seed availability. Microclimate conditions were inferred based on measurements in a subset of 46 plots. We found abundant post-fire conifer regeneration, with a median of 2,633 seedlings per hectare after three years, highlighting early resilience to wildfire. This robust regeneration was due in part to moderate post-fire climate conditions, supporting high survivorship (>50% on average) of all seedlings tracked over the study period (n = 763). A statistical model based on variables describing potential seed availability, microclimate, fire severity, understory vegetation, and soil nitrogen availability explained 75% of the variability in seedling density among plots. This analysis highlights the overarching importance of fine-scale heterogeneity in fire effects, which determine microclimate conditions and create diverse microsites for seedlings, ultimately facilitating post-fire tree regeneration. Our study elucidates mechanisms of forest resilience to wildfires and demonstrates the utility of a demographic perspective for anticipating forest responses to future wildfires under changing environmental conditions.

Read more here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ ... a%3Dihub

[caltrek]

Californians Dogged by Negative Health Effects from More Frequent Wildfires
by Natalie Hanson
November 14, 2022

Introduction:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Courthouse News) — With more Californians exposed to dangerous wildfire smoke every year due to increasingly destructive wildfires and climate change, lawmakers are urged to consider using limited funds to target the most vulnerable communities first.

“Living under Smoky Skies — Understanding the Challenges Posed by Wildfire Smoke in California,” published by the Legislative Analyst's Office on Monday, is intended to assist lawmakers considering actions to mitigate the impacts of wildfire smoke – particularly on Californians who are most vulnerable to its impacts.

Helen Kerstein, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the LAO, said Monday's report lays out information now available for policymakers working to tackle the issue, including recommendations for mitigating the most destructive fires and smoke.

“I grew up in California, born and raised, and I don't remember smoky days, at least not the way we see recently,” Kerstein said. But she noted that fire was once a part of the landscape until state and federal governments worked to suppress it, where Indigenous communities once tended and controlled it.

Wildfire smoke emissions have significantly increased and driven a growth in statewide air pollution, and experts say the trend will continue as more intense wildfires are expected in coming years. A combination of climate change and decades of poor forest management will drive these wildfire smoke events, as will some of the state’s efforts to reduce wildfires such as planned fires -- known as prescribed fires and cultural fires historically managed by Indigenous tribes.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/califor ... ildfires/


Most of California has seen increasing amounts of wildfire smoke, according to new research.
Legislative Analyst's Office via Courthouse News

[weatheriscool]

Major fires an increasing risk as the air gets thirstier, research shows
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-major-air-thirstier.html
by University of Melbourne

Greater atmospheric demand for water means a dramatic increase in the risk of major fires in global forests unless we take urgent and effective climate action, new research finds.

Published in Nature Communications, researchers have examined global climate and fire records in all of the world's forests over the last 20 years.

The researchers found that in all kinds of forests, there is a strong link between fire activity and vapour pressure deficit (VPD), which is a measure of the atmosphere's thirst.

VPD is calculated from temperature and humidity. It describes the difference between how much moisture is in the air, and how much moisture the air can hold when it's saturated (which is when dew forms.) The greater this difference, or deficit, the the greater the air's drying power on fuels.

Importantly, warmer air can hold more water, which means that VPD increases—and fuels will dry out more often—with rising temperatures due to climate change.

The researchers used satellite records of fire activity and a global climate dataset to find the maximum daily VPD for every fire detection—over 30 million records in the last 20 years, including almost one million in Australia.

[caltrek]

Western Wildfires Destroyed 246% More Homes and Buildings Over the Past Decade – Fire Scientists Explain What’s Changing
February 1, 2023

Introduction:

(The Conversation) It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend.

In a new study, we found a 246% increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western U.S. between the past two decades, 1999-2009 and 2010-2020.

This trend is strongly influenced by major fires in 2017, 2018 and 2020, including destructive fires in Paradise and Santa Rosa, California, and in Colorado, Oregon and Washington. In fact, in nearly every Western state, more homes and buildings were destroyed by wildfire over the past decade than the decade before, revealing increasing vulnerability to wildfire disasters.

What explains the increasing home and structure loss?

Surprisingly, it’s not just the trend of burning more area, or simply more homes being built where fires historically burned. While those trends play a role, increasing home and structure loss is outpacing both.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/western-wi ... ng-197384

[caltrek]

Wildfires in 2021 Emitted a Record-breaking Amount of Carbon Dioxide
March 2, 2023

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Irvine, Calif., March 2, 2023 — Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires, which have been gradually increasing since 2000, spiked drastically to a record high in 2021, according to an international team of researchers led by Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine.

Nearly half a gigaton of carbon (or 1.76 billion tons of CO2) was released from burning boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in 2021, 150 percent higher than annual mean CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2020, the scientists reported in a paper in Science.

“According to our measurements, boreal fires in 2021 shattered previous records,” said senior co-author Steven Davis, UCI professor of Earth system science. “These fires are two decades of rapid warming and extreme drought in Northern Canada and Siberia coming to roost, and unfortunately even this new record may not stand for long.”

The researchers said that the worsening fires are part of a climate-fire feedback in which carbon dioxide emissions warm the planet, creating conditions that lead to more fires and more emissions.

“The escalation of wildfires in the boreal region is anticipated to accelerate the release of the large carbon storage in the permafrost soil layer, as well as contribute to the northward expansion of shrubs,” said co-author Yang Chen, a UCI research scientist in Earth system science. “These factors could potentially lead to further warming and create a more favorable climate for the occurrence of wildfires."

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/981531

[weatheriscool]

As wet as it has been over the western United states this year I suspect that this fire season might be less active for once. Fingers crossed!

[wjfox]

Smoke from Australian bushfires depleted ozone layer by up to 5% in 2020, study finds

Wed 8 Mar 2023 16.00 GMT

Particles in bushfire smoke can activate molecules that destroy the ozone layer, according to new research that suggests future ozone recovery may be delayed by increasingly intense and frequent fires.

A study published in the journal Nature has found that smoke from the 2019-20 Australian bushfires temporarily depleted the ozone layer by 3% to 5% in 2020.

Smoke from the fires, which circulated around the globe, was ejected into the stratosphere, the second layer in Earth’s atmosphere, by a pyrocumulonimbus cloud.

In the ozone layer – part of the stratosphere – molecules of ozone gas absorb high-energy ultraviolet rays from the sun. This lessens the amount of radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface.

The lead researcher, Prof Susan Solomon, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, said the ozone destruction by smoke particles was similar to the process of the Antarctic ozone hole forming each spring, “but at much warmer temperatures”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... tudy-finds

[caltrek]

Methane From Megafires: More Spew Than We Knew
April 17, 2023

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) Using a new detection method, UC Riverside scientists found a massive amount of methane, a super-potent greenhouse gas, coming from wildfires — a source not currently being accounted for by state air quality managers.

Methane warms the planet 86 times more powerfully than carbon dioxide over the course of 20 years, and it will be difficult for the state to reach its required cleaner air and climate goals without accounting for this source, the researchers said.

Wildfires emitting methane is not new. But the amount of methane from the top 20 fires in 2020 was more than seven times the average from wildfires in the previous 19 years, according to the new UCR study.

“Fires are getting bigger and more intense, and correspondingly, more emissions are coming from them,” said UCR environmental sciences professor and study co-author Francesca Hopkins. “The fires in 2020 emitted what would have been 14 percent of the state’s methane budget if it was being tracked.”

The state does not track natural sources of methane, like those that come from wildfires. But for 2020, wildfires would have been the third biggest source of methane in the state.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/986210

[weatheriscool]

Wildfires in Anchorage? Climate change sparks disaster fears
By MARK THIESSEN 57 minutes ago

Flames are visible from the Beluga Point parking area near Anchorage, Alaska, on July 19, 2016, as a wildfire near McHugh Creek burns. A recent series of wildfires near Anchorage and the hottest day on record have sparked fears that a warming climate could soon mean serious, untenable blazes in urban areas — just like in the rest of the drought-plagued American West. (Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Research on a flat spot for air evacuations. Talk of old-style civil defense sirens to warn of fast-moving wildfires. Hundreds of urban firefighters training in wildland firefighting techniques while snow still blankets the ground.

This is the new reality in Alaska’s largest city, where a recent series of wildfires near Anchorage and the hottest day on record have sparked fears that a warming climate could soon mean serious, untenable blazes in urban areas — just like in the rest of the drought-plagued American West.

The risk is particularly high in the city’s burgeoning Anchorage Hillside neighborhood, where multi-million dollar homes have pushed further and further up steep slopes and to the forest’s edge. Making the challenge even greater is that many of these areas on the Hillside — home to about 35,000 people — have but one road in and out, meaning that fleeing residents could clog a roadway or be cut off from reaching Anchorage at all.

The prospect of a major wildfire there keeps Anchorage Fire Chief Doug Schrage awake at night when conditions are hot and dry.

“I’ve characterized this as probably the single largest threat to the municipality of Anchorage,” he said............................................................

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/alaska-ancho ... 5a851430cd

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Controlled Burns Help Prevent Wildfires, Experts Say. But Regulations Have Made It Nearly Impossible to Do These Burns.
by Jennifer Oldham
May 12 , 2023

Introduction:

(ProPublica) Colorado’s snowcapped Rockies towered in the distance on a crisp April day as firefighter Emilio Palestro used a torch to ignite damp prairie grass within view of a nearby farmhouse and a suburban neighborhood.

Propelled by a breeze, orange flames crackled up a ditch bank, devouring a thick mat of dead grass, cornhusks and weeds. It was neither too windy, nor too humid, nor too hot — a rare goldilocks moment for firefighters to safely clear irrigation ditches of weeds, grasses and brush that can block the flow of water and spread wildfire.

“At this time of year, it’s a race against what we call green-up,” said Seth McKinney, fire management officer for the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, as eye-stinging smoke curled over newly emerging shoots of grass nourished by a wet winter. “We are threading that needle to find the right time in between a rainstorm, red flag conditions” — when winds, temperatures and dry conditions magnify wildfire risk — “and snow melt.”

McKinney is trying to prevent conflagrations like the Marshall Fire, the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history, which killed two people and incinerated 1,084 residences and seven businesses in December 2021. That fire ignited in overgrown grasslands crisscrossed by unkempt ditches, which together spread flames into urban areas with unprecedented speed, according to scientific simulations and eyewitnesses.

The controlled use of fire by expert crews is widely considered the most effective way to reduce the dangerous build-up of grasses and other vegetation that fuel larger conflagrations, experts agree.

The article goes on to discuss how regulations in Colorado have made it difficult to carry on the needed prescribed burns. Also noted is the danger from grassland fires as opposed to forest fires. The role extreme weather and climate change play in inhibiting the use of prescribed burns is reviewed.

Read more here: https://www.propublica.org/article/col ... all-fire

[weatheriscool]

A 'Canadian Armageddon' Sets Parts of Western Canada on Fire

"Fires have broken out throughout western Canada, including British Columbia, but hardest hit has been neighboring Alberta, a proud oil and gas producing province sometimes referred to as “the Texas of the North,” which has declared a state of emergency. More than 94 active wildfires were burning as of Friday afternoon."

https://news.yahoo.com/canadian-armaged ... 02102.html

[weatheriscool]

[caltrek]

Federal Judge Finds Forest Service Violated Clean Water Act While Fighting Wildfires
by Alanna Maden
May 26, 2023

Introduction:

(Courthouse News) — A federal judge in Montana partially sided with environmentalists on Friday, agreeing that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Clean Water Act by discharging aerially deployed fire retardant into waterways without a permit.
The order from U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen comes seven months after nonprofit Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics challenged the service under the Clean Water Act, claiming that between 2012 and 2019, the service dumped 761,283 gallons of aerial retardant into streams while fighting wildfires.

According to the group’s 2022 complaint, the service’s deployment of fire retardants into waterways occurred on over 459 occasions without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit — a claim the service only partially denied, countering that it only recorded water contamination 213 times.

The service also denied that its contamination of streams is irreparable every time, stating that while the retardant can cause “lethal and sub-lethal effects on aquatic species,” its lethal intrusion into streams is “expected to be extremely rare and the majority of effects, if any occur, are assumed to be sub-lethal or indirect.”

With that said, a recent government study found that fire retardants — mainly consisting of inorganic fertilizers and salts — can harm more than just fish and amphibians. The retardant can also further imperil birds like the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, as well as several types of insects, plants and mammals found throughout the western United States.

But despite conflicting arguments about how or when the service violated the law, Judge Christensen maintained that neither stance changed the fact that the service discharged fire retardants into waterways without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/federal ... wildfires/

caltrek’s comment: Obtaining a NPDES may seem like a bureaucratic technicality, but I suspect the process might result in a better cost-benefit analysis of the practice. Of course, certain property owners will probably become quite anxious concerning forcing that process as they hope for maximum protection of their property. All part of the problem of allowing construction in wildland and wildland-urban interface areas.