Case Studies and Useful Papers Flashcards
Australian Black Saturday Bush Fires, Melbourne, 2009
Stats: 450k ha burned; >3k buildings; 173 fatalities; >$4 bil damage
Conditions: high fine dry fuels, strong wind, high temps near 40, low humidity
Multiple reported causes: arson, lightning,
Failures: prepare, stay and defend or leave early policy failed to account for fires of this scale; poor individual decisions and assumptions e.g. no plans, slow evacuation.
New policy: all fire, better warning/tim, realistic options, advice, shared responsibility
US Wildland Firefighting
Local, regional and national teams.
Hotshot crews on frontlines with specific job of managing an active fire through setting backfires, burnouts, scraping dirt lines - chainsaws, GPS, wind/humidity/temp reader, ‘Chingadera’, drip torches
Californian wildfires, 2015
The Valley Fire, Lake County, 2015
Conditions: 37C, worsening, 4-yr drought, dry, winds
Stats: 1,958 structures, 76k acres, 4 deaths, 4,234 firefighters deployed, 4 severely burnt in burnover, 23k evacuated
Masses of resoures: 442 engines, 94 hand crews, 8 air tankers, 23 helicopters - Calfire didn’t have enough alone.
At the time was 3rd most destructive, 2003 and 1991 above. Now 2017/18 fires have exceeded this.
Californian wildfires, 2018
‘Camp Fire’, Butte County, 2018
Stats: 85 deaths, 52k evacuated, $16.5 billion, 62k ha, took 17 days to fully contain (8-25 Nov)
Conditions: heavy grass from wet spring, unusually dry autumn, low humidity, dry fuel, sustained hot, dry winds
“Cause”: electrical transmission failure from energy company’s electrics.
Failures: emergency alert system failed, poor communication, late/no evacuation, poor road management and policy/preparedness.
Towns of Concow and Paradise >95% destroyed.
Saddleworth Moor, UK, 2018
22k acres peat burned, loss of stored 183,000 tonnes of Carbon.
Took nearly 4 weeks to extinguish.
Graham et al. (2020):
Emitted lots of smoke, trace gases, aerosols transported downwind over highly populated regions of Manchester and Liverpool (4-5x higher than seasonal average of PM2.5)
Increased CO and CO2 emissions; similar to what a power station would produce.
European fires
Different management techniques:
France - seasonal, geographical
Spain - technological, professional, monitoring
Greece - poor, varied terrain, tourism, coastal winds, lack of monitoring/policy -> Mati fire, 2018.
WUI and Climate Change: Coughlan and Petty (2012)
‘Linking humans and fire: a proposal for a transdisciplinary fire ecology’
Human-fire relationships poorly defined, especially from the perspective of multiple disciplines
To link human populations and ecological landscape through knowledge of fire ecology and social systems
Ignitions a result of decisions, human behaviour, legal and illegal
Impacts + behaviour dependent on layout of vegetation in an urban area, infrastructural materials - vary between culture, region, country
WUI and Climate Change: Moritz et al. (2014)
‘learning to coexist with fire’
Potential escalation - major impacts to lives, homes, expenses, ecosystem services.
Climate change -> fires inevitable -> sustainable coexistence necessary
Variation in strategies essential - dominant ‘command + control’ not good -> to better address social vulnerabilities/adaptations
Consider natural fire regimes, and human alteration
Greater governmental responsibility? (they argue)
WUI and Climate Change: Doer and Santin (2016)
‘wildfire trends and their impacts’
Fire as only bad, destructive, increasing in climate change media/academia -> in reality, with available data, long-term trends indicate fewer but larger fires.
Expanding WUI might make fires more visible, so we think they’re increasing when they’re not.
Fire history -> current burning lower than in last 2000 yrs.
With climate change, need ‘balanced and informed understanding of realities of wildfire’
WUI and Climate Change: Schoennagel et al. (2017)
‘adapt to more wildfire, North America’
WUI -> higher risk of climate-driven fires
Despite ecological benefits, unknown response to increased burning and warming
Current strategies inadequate: focus primarily on specific resilience approaches i.e. resistance, restoration post-fire and suppression
Need ‘new era of western wildfires’, where ‘adaptive resilience’ is promoted: complex, residential focus, prescribed burns, urban layout, that ‘accepts wildfire as an inevitable catalyst of change’
WUI and Climate Change: Manzello et al. (2018)
‘the growing global wildland urban interface fire dilemma: priority needs’
- Ignition resistant communities - “hardening”, resources, materials, policy, response, maintenance
- WUI firefighting and awareness of timescale, synthesis of approaches, equipment
- Evacuation, communication, emergency management, public education - synthesis of data, methods, learning from past
- Environmental processes e.g. runoff, climate, particulates, air, water pollution, threatened species
Trandisciplinary approach e.g. Cerrado fire management
Simon and Pennington (2012) - fire-adapted species
Durigan and Ratter (2016): savanna fire-dependent, but extensively misused by agribusiness, fire suppression by gov -> fuel accumulation; lack of clear guidelines; potential for indigenous knowledge to help -> ‘fire ecologists must be pro-active in sharing their knowledge’
Eloy et al. (2019): indigenous/trad knowledge can make important, valid contributions to new policy e.g. seasonal to prevent uncontrollable wildfire
Mistry et al. (2018): need ‘intercultural governance’, more community participation to avoid ‘appropriation of local knowledge’. Brazilian gov starting to move away from zero-fire policy but lack of training on integrating TFK.
