So focused on size
Attending to fire’s speed🔥, coexisting with (year-round) fire, two-eyed seeing🌜🌛, home hardening 🏡 and carbon counting 🌍
Just one thing:
If you just read one thing, this cover story from Science, also written about in The New York Times (<-gift links wherever possible), was like a tidal wave through the wildfire community. “The speediest 2.7 percent of blazes accounted for almost 80 percent of structures destroyed, two-thirds of fatalities and more than 60 percent of the money spent on fire suppression.” Science can help us figure out what the difference is between a big wildfire and a dangerous one. “We’ve been so focused on size,” said Jennifer Balch, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But what we really need to focus on is speed.”
The SF Chronicle points out that while wildfires are getting faster everywhere, they’re getting faster… faster… in California. “Between 2001 and 2020, wildfire growth rates increased by 249% across the Western U.S. — defined as a group of 11 Western states — but 398% in California alone. Mountainous regions of Southern California were found to have the largest increase in daily wildfire growth rates in the two-decade span.”
Two of the study’s authors elaborate on the implications for fire science and policy in a related article in Nature. Data, models and collaboration have a lot to teach us about how to prepare for a fire-resilient future. “The focus should be on how to coexist with fire — not simply how best to battle it.”
“The trend in fire growth rates is just further evidence of how critical it is for anyone living in fire-prone regions to undertake the type of work that we know will protect homes and communities.”
—Crystal Kolden, Associate Professor, Fire Science, UC Merced told The SF Chronicle.
Fire News this month:
❗Notes from the Fire Tower | Red Flags
🔥 Fire, Generally | Local land temperatures, utilities, good fire, and post-fire erosion
🌏 Climate | Nuts, hurricanes and carbon, carbon, carbon
🚒 Firefighting | Miracles, strained resources, plentiful maps, tiny firehouses, and forest management under the incoming administration
🚁 Firetech | High altitude balloons, Pano AI and Red Sky
💥 What’s burning? | Southern hemisphere, Northern
Notes from the Fire Tower
Red Flags
When the Red Flag warning popped up on my phone at first I thought that it hadn’t registered I was actually in Connecticut. As a Californian, I’m all too used to those alerts and the accompanying threat of power outages, or worse, smoke days or evacuation notices for friends and family. But no—fire was a real and present danger in Connecticut. Crews were fighting unusually large wildfires nearby, straining local resources. One firefighter tragically lost his life in a UTV rollover incident and the governor ordered flags at half mast across the state.
Red Flag conditions then impacted the plans we had to demonstrate Rain’s technology to a group of fire leaders, government representatives, investors and philanthropists. The modest contained fire we’d prepared was canceled the day before our demo. Our team scrambled to find a propane fire pit from the local hardware store to serve as the heat signature for our fire localization and targeting demonstration.
We read a lot about how wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity here in Fire News. It really brings the idea home when the news we’re sharing has headlines like, “Fire crews on both US coasts battle wildfires; 1 death in New York-New Jersey fire”, “Why wildfires in the eastern U.S. can be more destructive than you think” and, “Is the Northeast Entering Its Wildfire Era?”
Our experience, and many of the news stories this month, continue to highlight that the only better time than now to get better at coexisting with fire, was yesterday. Hardening our built environment, applying prescribed fire to landscapes, developing better fire models, continuing to apply learned wisdom from scientists and (as we’re doing at Rain) building new tools for firefighters isn’t going to get any easier or less urgent in the fire years to come. We’ll be glad we’re already on a roll.
“Wildland fire wasn’t supposed to be a year-round career.”
—Luke Mayfield, the president of the nonprofit Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, on the growing need for wildland firefighters in the U.S.
Fire, Generally
Local land temperatures, utilities, good fire, and post-fire erosion
Scientists showed that large fires (which are increasingly common) raise local land temperatures for decades in part because of the darkening of the ground surface and removal of the forest canopy. The temperature increase was found to impact postfire stand regeneration. "Climate-smart forestry should aim to mitigate the climate risks of large fires.”
The news outlet Utility Dive reports that the financial stability of almost 100 utilities is threatened by wildfires because of a credit downgrade. “Even Warren Buffet was saying utilities may no longer be a profitable business. Obviously, Berkshire Hathaway has made quite an investment over the years, so the alarm bells were ringing,” Andrew Dressel, vice president of energy at Charles River Associates. There is hope that mitigation efforts by state governments will alleviate the downgrade.
The LA Times talks home hardening in relation to how the Mountain fire impacted the community of Camarillo. This related deep dive on how a fire moved through a community built on the edge of the wildland-urban interface was fascinating. “Considering the location of buildings in relation to extreme fire behavior, the neighborhoods experienced relatively minimal damage compared to fire officials expectations.”
A story on prescribed burn associations nationwide reveals that, “there are now 133 groups in 22 states, twice the number there were five years ago, and they’re lighting hundreds of prescribed fires on tens of thousands of acres each year.”
And, a lovely update from the site of a controlled burn in California, where a rare fire-dependent native plant has bloomed. “The intentional burns at Jasper Ridge are a reflection of this knowledge in action and part of a bigger commitment to ‘two-eyed seeing,’ an approach to stewardship that integrates Indigenous and Western approaches.”
We often hear about the increasing size and frequency of wildfires—scientists have now also measured the corresponding (and related) changes in erosion patterns in California.
Coincidentally, Zeke Lunder from The Lookout took his viewers on a tour of the water runoff in Chico post-Park Fire after our first atmospheric river of the season. He shared fresh footage of the swollen creeks paired with virtual walk-throughs of maps to help us understand how the system is designed to work, and how much water the channels were carrying and what are future risks for newer developments around Chico.
Climate
Nuts, hurricanes and carbon, carbon, carbon
Smoky skies may have cut nut yields by 15%-50% at some orchards, with indications that the impacts may be long-lived according to UC Davis researchers.
In the wake of Hurricane Helene, about one-fifth of the federally protected forests have been catastrophically damaged, leaving the forests more vulnerable to wildfires in the future. “The ground was covered in leaves that were so shredded, they looked like parsley.”
A four-part series in the The Oregon Capital Chronicle covers forests—two dozen of them, covering over a million acres—that are being dedicated to storing carbon, and selling carbon credits. “New carbon crediting markets are betting on a future where they can make money on Oregon’s forests without cutting them down, and instead, based on the carbon they store.”
One of the squidgiest aspects of carbon counting related to wildfires is that the release and absorption of carbon is a natural part of a forest’s life cycle. A study, published in Science and also covered by The NYT, shows that a global rise in the emissions of wildfires is linked to climate change in the exatropics (ie anywhere that is outside of the tropics). And, it argues that these emissions put global carbon budgets at risk. “The present norm of counting forest fire emissions fluxes as natural, on both managed and unmanaged land, is increasingly at odds with the observed growth in fire emission fluxes tied to anthropogenic climate change.”
Speaking of carbon, a recent paper in the National Science Review reveals ‘a large decline of the land carbon sink in 2023’. The authors of the study posit that along with typical carbon gains and losses related to El Niño and La Niña, drought in the Amazon, and extreme fire emissions (largely from Canada), the extreme heat of 2023 had ‘a strong negative impact on the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to mitigate climate change.’
“Measurements from Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory showed that atmospheric carbon concentrations surged by 86% in 2023 compared to the previous year, marking a record high since tracking began in 1958. Despite this sharp increase, fossil fuel emissions only rose by about 0.6%, suggesting that other factors, such as weakened carbon absorption by natural ecosystems, may have driven the spike.” —European Space Agency
Firefighting
Miracles, strained resources, plentiful maps, tiny firehouses, and forest management under the new federal government
I appreciated this great update from The Hotshot Wakeup on one of the firefighters injured in the rollover crash in Orange County last September, who just returned home from a rehab center in Colorado.
Oregon lawmakers will hold a special session to approve emergency funds to cover bills for their unprecedented wildfire season.
Many states are wondering whether they are ready for the wildfires to come—especially in the Northeast. A story by Tiffany Taylor of the United Aerial Firefighters Union (Rain is a member) covers the strained national supply of qualified aerial firefighting pilots, trained mechanics and aircraft. “The public doesn’t know that there simply are not enough resources available to respond when their home is threatened.”
A handy resource from NIFC (National Interagency Fire Center) gathers a host of publicly available maps in one place—from a current large wildfire map to a U.S. drought monitor, where you can see why the Northeast is so susceptible to wildfire presently.
This little New Hampshire town paper had an interesting story about how modern firefighting equipment barely fits in old stations, describing fire trucks that are so close to walls that there’s no room to walk around them, or a fire truck that can only be parked in the garage when it’s full of water and it’s a few inches lower. This is not to mention leaky rooms, lack of showers, sinking driveways… myriad needs for renovation or new construction of firehouses.
The U.S. Forest Service is considering changes to its forest management plan that would allow more logging. Some wonder if this is being considered in anticipation of new leadership in Washington.
Firetech
High altitude balloons, Pano AI and Red Sky
NASA and the Forest Service are collaborating to test high-altitude balloons that will help firefighters communicate in real time during wildland fires. (This sounds very similar to technology I helped document when I first started at Google X in 2014).
Pano AI got press coverage in this CNBC story about AI and wildfires.
Rain recently had the pleasure of attending Red Sky Summit, where fire folks convene to share ideas and promote technology that can help end catastrophic wildfire. The organizers have curated key takeaways here. If you’re a paying subscriber to The Hotshot Wakeup you can also get his take here.
Also at Red Sky Summit, a new trade association was announced. The story was covered by Politico.
“The Association of FireTech Innovation… marks the growth of a niche industry as utilities and local governments reckon with record-setting losses from wildfires over the past decade as well as a rising risk from climate change.” —Politico
What’s burning?
Southern hemisphere, Northern
For the most part in the northern hemisphere wildfire season (if we still believe in such things) is coming to a close, and some of our aerial resources are starting to station in the southern hemisphere for summer, where fire season is just beginning.
But, as noted in several articles this month, it’s interesting to see where the long tail has been. Pennsylvania has had more wildfires this year than usual. Wyoming suffered its most devastating fire year since 1988—nine counties are designated as disaster areas and the Governor is seeking a budget increase to cover wildfire costs. Southern California just experienced its third most destructive fire in the last decade.
Thank you for sharing the fire journey with me. Big thanks to those who consistently share great content via LinkedIn or directly to my inbox. Kudos especially this month to: Ralph Bloemers, The Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, Chief Kim Zagaris, Seth Schalet, Chris Anthony, Tiffany Taylor and Genevieve Biggs.
And to close us out this week—stories about good fire are abundant in this newsletter, but given the current state of politics nationally, a quote from one such story—especially during this week of gratitude—deserved an airing.
“Witnessing the way that prescribed-burn association members across generations, cultural backgrounds and political beliefs are working together to care for the land has changed my view of the future. This growing social movement contradicts the narrative of a country so distracted by our divisions that we cannot solve the ecological challenges bearing down on us. These associations are evidence that solutions are sometimes very simple: We can solve problems by showing up for our neighbors and doing the work together.”
—M.R. Connor There’s a Simple Way to Stop Dangerous Wildfires. We Barely Use It.
Until next month,
Andrea