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Friday, January 2, 2009

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2008 A big year in California Wildland Firefighting

Posted: 01 Jan 2009 04:35 PM CST

California had a record setting wildfire year with over 1.7 Billion dollars spent fighting wildland fires.

1.4 million acres of land in California burned, Almost 25% of all the land burned by wildfire's in the nation. All told, an area nearly three times the size of Orange County burned throughout the state. More than 2,300 structures were destroyed.

Wildfire suppression cost's soar: Almost 2 Billion Dollars spent to fight California wild fires...

The State California spent over $1 billion dollars.
The United States Forest Service spent half of it's firefighting budget in California, approximately $700 million of the U.S. Forest Service's firefighting a $1.4 billion wildland firefighting budget in fiscal 2008 was spent on California wildfires.

Satellite map of California wildland fires June 25th 2008

Northern California Lightning Siege - Much of the California acreage burned in early summer, During the Northern California Lightning Siege when an unprecedented dry-lightning storm started more than 2,000 wildfires from Monterey County to the Oregon border. Some more remote fires burned unstaffed for days due to wildland firefighting resources being overwhelmed.
The facts: The Lightning Series fires started between June 20, 2008, and July 24th, 2008
creating 2,093 Fires, scorching 1,032,722 acres, causing 3 Fatalities, with a total of 158 residences, 1 commercial building and 139 outbuildings destroyed.

The big Lightning Complex fires:

Shasta-Trinity Lightning Complex - 86,500 acres
Butte Lightning Complex - 59,440 acres
Mendocino Lightning Complex - 54,817 acres
Panther - Klamath Theater Wildland Fire - 53,149 acres, Siskiyou/ Blue 2 Complex-klamath Theater Wildland Fire - 88,069 acres, Bear Wallow Complex - Klamath Theater Wildland Fire - 50,820 acres

The late fall Southern California Fires: The Marek, Sesnon and Sayre fires burned across the brushy hills of Los Angeles County, destroying hundreds of homes. In Orange and Riverside counties, the 30,000-acre Freeway Complex blaze destroyed nearly 200 residences. And out on the Santa Barbra coast the Tea fireburned through upscale Montecito neighborhoods.

The Big Los Padres Forest Fires: As noted over at Firefighter Blog (Link) the California wildland fire season began with a small roadside blaze in Big Sur on April 17 and ends with a small roadside blaze in Big Sur on December 21.
The largest fires of the season were centered on central coast. The Indians Fire and the monstrous Basin Complex haunted the coast throughout the summer months.

Firefighting policy changes coming: Stay and defend
Long championed by California Fire News and the normal policy in Australia "Stay and Defend or flee early" is becoming a option seriously considered in California. In conjuction with the new vegetation clearance requirements and fire-resistant building material construction codes.
Changing the mandatory evacuation mindset - Rather than evacuating, homeowners are trained to protect their residences from the shower of embers that are typically more of a threat during a wildfire than encroaching flames, able bodied homeowners would be encouraged to stay and defend their homes and property from wildland fires and if necessary seek refuge in a structure as the flame front passes, then emerging to fight small spot fires and extinguish glowing embers which are the cause of most structure losses.
A massive education and training program would be needed to deploy this stategy sucessfully.

Federal Wildfire suppression thought box changes: The Forest Service is starting to embrace a strategy that it hopes will help contain costs. Rather than aggressively attacking every front of a fire, it allows managers to pull back in remote areas while focusing on more critical points. But that approach is unlikely to see much use in the developed areas of California due to the large amount of wildland urban interface.