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| Source: On the Fire Line (Los Angeles Times) http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bigpicturefire,0,5985825.htmlstory |
The Station
Fire in 2009 started from the Angeles National Forest, which manages the
habitats, flora and fauna ecosystems, and watersheds. An arson fire began on
August 26th, 2009 near the Angeles Crest Highway and quickly spread,
burning the dead plants in the mountain. It was the worst in Los Angeles County
history and burned for more than a month, threatening the Mount Wilson
Observatory atop Mt. Wilson, the origin of the Big Bang Theory (Jessica Garrison, 2009) . One forth of
the forest was burned, wildlife displaced as well as 91 homes, and worst of
all, two firefighters died while trying to avoid the flames and drove off the (Wikipedia, 2012) . The smoke from the fire could
be seen even in downtown Los Angeles, leaving scars not only in the mountains
but also in the hearts of the residents in the LA area. Below is a picture taken from LA downtown, featuring the smoke of the
fire rising up in the air, blocking the clear view of the skyline.
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| Source: On the Fire Lines (Los Angeles Times) http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bigpicturefire,0,5985825.htmlstory |
Using GIS
as a tool, I downloaded data from various government and university websites,
trying to get a better understanding of the fire and its effects. History
cannot be reversed, but we can certainly learn from the mistakes and prevent it
from happening again. Although there was wide criticism that the officials were
not able to contain the fire in the first 48 hours from when it started, a
report from the USFS stated, “Appropriate decisions were made on the fire.” In
addition, while the public complained about the insufficient resources devoted
into containing the fire on the second day, the report argued that even if
there were additional resources, the effectiveness of their firefighting
operation could not be improved, if not to result in “needless exposure of
firefighters to the hazards of wildland fire“ (Gabbert, 2009) . As an
amateur on the issue of wildfire, I could not comment on the adequacy of the
resources devoting into firefighting at the forest, but I could present the data
regarding the facilities, the origins and the fire and other facilities
(churches) nearby.
I began by
looking at the perimeter of the fire with the fire suppressing facilities
labeled on the map. The most eye-catching scene is that none of the fire
stations were very close to the forest (United States Geological Survey
ESRI, 2006) .
I thought it was strange at first, but I came to realize that the forest was on
a slope, and with the high risk of fire leading to high risk of debris flows,
it seemed rational not to build a fire station on the slope, with people 24/7
in it with expensive machines and vehicles. I measured the straight-line
distance from the nearest fire station to the origin of the fire and the result
was 25.18 miles. Since the distance was not measured along the roads, it is
safe to say that the actual traveling distance from the station to the fire is
more than 30 miles.
The next
thing to look at is the fuel rank. As one can see in the legend, the fuel rank
goes from -1 to 3, with -1 being non-fuel, 1 being moderate, 2 being high and 3
being very high. It is easily seen that the places covered in purple are the
areas could fuel the fire and cause the fire to spread more quickly than other
areas (California Depatment of Foresty and Fire Protection, 2005) . Now look at
the perimeters of the fire (shown by the shapes with black outline), the origin
of the fire was in the part of high fuel rank, which cause it to spread very
quickly, eventually to ¼ of the forest (Wikipedia, 2012) . These two
factors justified the quick spread of the fire and the difficulty to contain
the fire before it spread.
Another
interesting thing I wanted to know while glancing through the data available to
me was the effect on different churches of the Station Fire. As we can see, as
far as the perimeter of the fire went, no churches were really included in the
black hollow shape. However, three churches of different religions were very
close to the perimeter, indicating high risks. Had they been built on a land of
high fuel rank, they may be at even greater risk. There are two conclusions I
made from this: when building churches, hospitals and other facilities, various
areas such as fuel rank, slope, and risk of fire should be considered; the
other is that religion, in this case, was not a big factor of which the
churches did not get burned (although one could argue that the churches were
safe due to their protection from God). The most important thing is that fire
threats are not as simple as we thought and actually happens more often then we
expect. One way to prevent losses is to constantly review the areas of threat
and renew information of the area. In that way, the chances of such devastating
fire could be diminished.
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| Source: On the Fire Line (Los Angeles Times) http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bigpicturefire,0,5985825.htmlstory |
Bibliography
California
Depatment of Foresty and Fire Protection. (2005). Fuel Rank. Fuel Rank
. California : California Depatment of Foresty and Fire Protection.
Gabbert, B. (2009, 11 13). USFS report says steep slopes
and fuel conditions inhibited initial attack of Station FIre. Retrieved
11 27, 2012, from Wildfire Today:
http://wildfiretoday.com/2009/11/13/usfs-report-says-steep-slopes-and-fuel-conditions-inhibited-initial-attack-of-station-fire/
Jessica Garrison, A. Z. (2009, 08 31). Station fire
claims 18 homes and two firefighters. Retrieved 11 27, 2012, from Los
Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/31/local/me-fire31
United States Geological Survey ESRI. (2006, 10 01). U.S.
Geographic Names Information System Churches for Los Angeles County. U.S.
Geographic Names Information System Churches for Los Angeles County ,
2006. Redlands, California , USA: ESRI.
Wikipedia. (2012, 10 5). Angeles National Forest.
Retrieved 11 27, 2012, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeles_National_Forest
