Limiting our Ability to Predict the Future

Just one thing:

Sure enough—megafires are impacting drinking water sources. Whether from toxic chemicals leaching into the supply or because there are increases in erosion post wildfires, there’s reason to pay attention to the link between severe wildfire and the water that’s coming from our tap. And, this first-of-its-kind multi decade study by the USGS of the influence of wildfire on sediment in California points out that solutions will, “‘take time, and it’s more than that: It’s going to take a lot of public will and money. It’s a crisis situation. ... It’s only going to get worse until we really get serious about addressing it,” said Glen Martin of the California Water Impact Network in an interview with The LA Times about the study.

“Around 60 to 65 percent of the United States’ drinking water comes from forested areas. As fires burn in these areas, they increase the risk of cancer-causing and toxic substances entering water supplies. An estimated 53.3 million U.S. residents who live in areas with significant wildfire risk may face damaged drinking water infrastructure from those flames.” —The Washington Post

This week:

Notes from the Fire Tower ?? | Full spectrum

Fire, Generally ?? | Wildfire runoff, estimating vegetation, highlighting the Karuk tribe, rangeland fires, low and moderate fire

Climate ?? | Replanting, greenhouse gasses, and fire creatures

Firefighting ?? | Loss ????????, unforeseen hazards, aerial firefighting, budget shortfalls, PFAs, cancer screening and border walls

Firetech ?? | Fireproof gel, and firetech gets some attention in Bloomberg Business and The New York Times

What’s burning? | Western US, South Dakota and the southern hemisphere starts up

Notes from the Fire Tower

Full spectrum?

As I was combing through all the news about wildfire this week the overwhelming feeling I had was gratitude for everyone in the fire ecosystem. From scientists out in the field, to my friend Steve, a career firefighter who drives a ladder truck for our local fire department, it takes all of us, each in our own lanes to help us adapt to a warming and ever-more flammable planet.

There’s a little bit of a lot of things in this week’s Fire News. Stories about research to determine what are the biggest risks, what are the levers we can pull, and quantifying how urgent it is. Tales of firefighters whose knowledge, bravery and heart protect us daily. And I am also excited about how the work of technologists like myself has been highlighted. It takes persistence to focus on solutions and work on projects that may sound hair-brained, but have the potential to scale to the size of the problems we face when it comes to a warming planet and fire. This week it’s the full spectrum. ??

Fire, Generally

Wildfire runoff, estimating vegetation, highlighting the Karuk tribe, rangeland fires, caribou, fire resilience, low and moderate fire

• The studies of water and erosion are acutely relevant for those who are living near the Park Fire, which is still burning—and simultaneously under a flash flood watch. Zeke Lunder at The Lookout goes over fire severity and the particularities of runoff using a combination of recent drone footage of the burn scar and maps to help people understand the risks they’re facing now and as winter approaches.
• To see what kind of vegetation was impacted in a fire, this tool from the Wildland Mapping Institute is an invaluable resource. The Park Fire, for example, was largely shrub land (almost 60%), evergreen forest (about 30%) and grass (10%).
• Indigenous folks already have solutions to extreme weather, as this piece that focuses on the work of the Karuk tribe in the Klamath showcases so well. Zeke Lunder at The Lookout recently showed us around the Karuk land via map and historic footage when the area was impacted by the Boise Fire last month, playing this film from the tribe for us, which is definitely worth a watch.?
• Ranchers in Oregon are still calculating losses from a record wildfire season, and won’t know how many cattle have been lost until roundups happen this fall. Valley rancher and volunteer fire Captain Burt Siddoway says, “A lot of the ranchers I know out here would have preferred their house to burn down than their ranch to burn down. It's cheaper to rebuild your house.” And speaking of Oregon, it has several new lighting-sparked wildfires growing fast (evacuations), fueled by hot weather and winds.?
• Endangered woodland caribou are particularly vulnerable to changes in their ecosystem and rely on wooded areas to avoid predators, but those areas have been severely impacted by wildfires. “There’s so little good caribou habitat left, there’s a worry that if it burns, where are the caribou going to go? Is that going to be the end?” Stephanie Leonard, environmental coordinator for the Aseniwuche Winewak Nation asks.
• Animals on the sagebrush rangeland of Wyoming suffered from fast-moving fires. The area is home to pronghorn antelope, which though very fast, could not all outrun the fires. The area is also home to the endangered sage grouse, which depends on sage to survive. Sage is not resilient to fire, and invasive species that are fast to regrow were already threatening the area.
• Perhaps the biologists of Wyoming should talk to the people at Pepperwood Preserve who are researching how to use the scorched earth where fires burned hot to support planting native grasses in areas where invasive species have taken hold. Could that work for sagebrush??
• On the Russian River (near my hometown), it’s clear that even once there’s money to help make a town fire resilient (in this case with a federal grant of $7 million), there’s still plenty of roadblocks to making it happen. Timber companies don’t usually apply fire to their assets (trees), but in the historic town of McCloud Pacific Forest Trust pulled of a really large prescribed burn (and made a nice film about the work) on behalf of Schroll Timberlands.
• Confirming what prescribed burn advocates know to be true: low- and moderate fire reduces the risk of catastrophic wildfire, while catastrophic fire increases the risk of high severity wildfires by increasing the prevalence of shrubs and drying out the understory of the forest. “The extent to which previous fires moderate future fire severity will powerfully affect fire-prone forest ecosystem trajectories over the next century.“ I first heard about the study on NPR.?

"For understandable reasons, high-severity, destructive wildfires are of great interest to the public and researchers. But most wildfire in the West is low- to medium-intensity. Claire Tortorelli – a former postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis and the study’s lead author – said those wildfires 'do a lot of good work.'" —NPR

Climate

Replanting, greenhouse gasses, drivers & impacts, and fire creatures

• Ever wonder who’s replanting the forests, and how? In the Umpqua the answer is Anna Wemple, whose father was also a reforester, and her crew of experienced tree stewards. This short 4-minute film about their work was such a pleasure to watch.?
• Drivers and Impacts of the Record-Breaking 2023 Wildfire Season in Canada uses a massive amount of data to cover the causes and impacts of Canada’s record-breaking 2023 fire season. “Nationwide fire activity, affecting nearly all forested areas in a single season as experienced in 2023 was not anticipated until later in the century based on climate change projections.” Among the causes, they mention the Vapor Pressure Deficit, which another new paper covers in depth.
• Another study confirms that Canada’s 2023 wildfires released more greenhouse gasses than some of the largest emitting countries. “Carbon is counted when emitted from human sources, such as industrial activities, not natural disturbances in forests such as insect outbreaks or wildfires… ‘The atmosphere sees this carbon increasing, no matter how we set up our accounting system,’ [study author, Brendan Byrne] said”. The New York Times dives deep on the implications of the study. “Right now, the models are missing extreme fires like the ones in Canada in 2023, [Byrne] said, and that “limits our ability to predict the future.”
• At the inaugural Adaptable World Environment Summit leaders focused on how to prepare communities for the growing danger of fire as climate change takes effect.

“We are the fire creature. Fire is our ecological signature. It’s always been our identity,” [professor and author Stephen] Pyne said. “We can do this. Good fire made us. Bad fire may break us. But, really, that choice is ours.” —GovTech

Firefighting

Loss, unforeseen hazards, aerial firefighting, budget shortfalls, fire severity designations, PFAs, cancer screening and border walls

• Cal Fire lost two firefighters last week ????. Cal Fire Apparatus Engineer Christopher Ward suffered a medical emergency while on duty. Fire Captain Chris Christensen passed away while off duty, surrounded by family and friends. The cause of death has not been disclosed. Hard days for the Cal Fire community.
• In Portugal four firefighters died in a helicopter crash on their way back from fighting a fire near the city of Porto. ?? The pilot survived with leg fractures, and was rescued by a tourism boat and taken to a hospital for care.?
• The LA County fire department has issued new training material to instruct responding firefighters to keep distance from burning heavy-equipment vehicles, whose tires are at risk of exploding with enough force to create a shock wave, a little-known risk that cost firefighter Andrew Pontious his life in June ??.?
• Aerial firefighting is hot, dirty, dangerous work—and the people who do it love what they do… but the pilot supply isn’t infinite. “In a state where wildfires of previously unimaginable size and destructive force have become the norm, it’s hard to imagine anyone more indispensable than those pilots.”
• The Forest Service is facing a large budget shortfall and will be letting seasonal workers (firefighters) go at the end of the month, whether or not there are active wildfires and in spite of a large backlog of prescribed burns that The Feds have in their queue.
• In California a controversial senate bill to repeal current fire severity designations in favor of allowing the state fire marshal authority was up for debate, but ultimately did not pass this year. Recently, neighbors saw the benefit of fire mitigation work quite directly when a fire didn’t spread because of their good work.
• Firefighting is about much more than just fire. Last week in Arizona a small-town fire chief made the tough call to cut open the border wall to treat a patient who had fallen and acutely needed care, when neither the Mexican nor US border agents acted.?
• Massachusetts and Connecticut have become the first states to ban PFAs (forever chemicals) in firefighting gear. Richard MacKinnon Jr., president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts said, “We’ve known for years that our gear was saturated with PFAS. We believe the law will speed up the development of PFAS-free gear.”
• Firefighters are at elevated risk of cancer and heart complications because of the nature of their work. Aurora Fire Rescue in Colorado has received a grant from the federal government to offer comprehensive cancer screening to their firefighters.

“Between 2002 and 2019, cancer caused 66% of all career firefighter line-of-duty deaths, per data from the International Association of Firefighters. Heart disease caused 18 percent of career line-of-duty deaths for the same period. And, as with any life-threatening disease, especially cancer, early detection is key.” —CBS News

Firetech

Fireproof gel and firetech

• Scientists at Stanford and Cal Poly have developed a ‘water-enhancing’ gel that can be sprayed on structures that may prevent them from burning during wildfire events. “‘Our materials form this silica aerogel when exposed to fire that continues to protect the treated substrates after all the water has evaporated. These materials can be easily washed away once the fire is gone,’” says Eric Appel, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford.
• These robots are starting (good) fires in California, reports Bloomberg Business News. “There’s a fundamental mismatch between how many acres need treatment and what the capacity of the workforce today is,” says BurnBot Chief Executive Officer Anukool Lakhina. “More and bigger wildfires mean more communities and infrastructure at risk, and more carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere as forests are destroyed. Bigger blazes are also putting more pressure on firefighters, just as the industry is facing a labor shortage.”
• ‘Silicon Valley Wants to Fight Fires With Fire’ features the work of Megafire Action , Convective Capital , BurnBot and Kodama Systems . Rain advisor and advocate, Kate Dargan Marquis closed the story with a familiar concept, “Dargan envisions a future in which sensors in space and on the ground cue autonomous vehicles to not simply extinguish wildfires but to redirect their fury to benefit the landscape. There isn’t much time to get there — climate scientists believe Western forests will face ever-drier conditions for decades to come.”

What’s burning?

• Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, California, South Dakota,?
• Bolivia and Brazil.

“The southern hemisphere has recorded the largest number of outbreaks of wildfires in 14 years, with 3 million hectares (7.5 million acres) of land burned already this year and peak fire season still ahead.”?—Reuters

Hat tips for leads on the best fire news this edition go to: Genevieve Biggs , Ralph Bloemers , Jack Singer, Michael Wara , Michael Falkowski, PhD and Jay Ribakove .?

Thank you for coming on this fire journey with me, and for sharing with others who might find a compilation of all the news about fire to be a helpful resource,

Andrea