Wildfires and other fire incidents

[weatheriscool]

Biden surveys Colorado wildfire damage, comforts victims
Source: AP

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and PATTY NIEBERG

LOUISVILLE, Colo. (AP) — Offering hugs and humor, President Joe Biden comforted Coloradans grappling with rebuilding homes and businesses destroyed last week by a rare wind-whipped, winter fire that burned through a pair of heavily populated suburbs between Denver and Boulder.

One victim was identified Friday and one person remained unaccounted for out of some 35,000 forced from their homes.

Biden, and his wife, Jill, arrived in the Harper Lake neighborhood of Louisville on Friday afternoon to survey the damage, passing the scorched remnants of homes next to damaged structures still standing. They walked along a street where homes burned to their concrete foundations, meeting residents and local officials who have been overseeing the response and recovery.

Speaking at a recreation center in Louisville, Biden praised the “incredible courage” of the people who lost their homes in the fire and pledged the full support of the federal government to help rebuild.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-jo ... 1e90a348f8

[caltrek]

It is amazing to me that the view count for this (and other) threads is now so high. I keep wondering how much of this is people actually reading what is posted versus how much of it is for other reasons (bots, headline skimmers, etc,). At any rate, what I came here to post:

California's Forever Fire
by Elizabeth Weil
January 3, 2022

https://www.propublica.org/article/cali ... rever-fire

Extract:

(ProPublica) How did our (California’s) fire problem get to this point? …

One, California has a Mediterranean climate. Much of its landscape evolved with fire as a natural part of the cycle. Which is to say, it needs to burn.

Two, colonizers stole the land from Indigenous Californians, who knew how to live well with the ecology and burned vegetation at specific times of the year in part to maintain the health of the landscape and keep themselves safe. Then settlers, with government help, killed native Californians. Now very few people continue those Indigenous practices, and we have not returned land to the tribes. “I truly know almost everybody who has a cultural knowledge of fire, and I could probably count them, including myself, on my two hands,” Don Hankins, a Plains Miwok geography and planning professor at California State University, Chico, told me. This was the same conversation in which he noted that places near him that haven’t burned are just waiting. “In Butte County, we talk about the three remaining green ridges: the ridge I live on, the ridge to the north of me and the one just north of that. Those are the last three places where fire hasn’t been.”

Three, the United States Forest Service ...has… engaged in a forever war with fire….In 1947, Smokey Bear started exhorting citizens, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” sounding remarkably like Uncle Sam recruiting YOU to fight for the United States Army. The USFS owns more than half of forested California. (The state owns about 3%.) For the last 116 years, the agency has practiced an exuberant form of fire suppression, in part because it’s mandated to protect the nation’s forests and rangelands for multiple, sometimes conflicting uses: recreation, watershed health, propping up rural economies. A result is that California’s forests are now stuffed like a hoarder’s garage, with 300 to 400 trees per acre. Pre-USFS, the number was 30 to 70. You can think of the excess biomass as a huge fire debt. That debt will be paid off, willingly or not.

Those three factors lay the basic groundwork. The dangers continued compounding from there.

[caltrek]

It's Alive
by Jesse Nichols
January 12, 2022

https://grist.org/grist-video/its-alive ... ire-smoke/

Introduction:

(Grist) At a prescribed burn site in rural Idaho, a team of fire scientists are using a tricked-out drone to hunt for life in the smoke. What they discover could have big implications for our world, and our health.

Inside the cloud of smoke, amid all the dust and ash, are hundreds, or even thousands, of different bacteria and fungi. The scientists studying them are part of an entirely new field of research: Pyroaerobiology, the study of life in smoke.

The field is so new that it didn’t exist just a few years ago. Back then, there was only one published study on this subject. And it came from a high school science fair project.

Sarah Mims lives in San Antonio, Texas. And back in high school, she made an accidental discovery in her backyard. She’d set out microscope slides, trying to find dust that had traveled across the world. But instead, she found something unexpected.

“When I was looking at the slides under the microscope, there were a large number of just solid black particles,” Mims said. “And there were also a substantial number of fungal spores.”

[weatheriscool]

Wildfire along California's Big Sur forces evacuations
Source: AP

BIG SUR, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters on Saturday were battling a wildfire that broke out in the rugged mountains along Big Sur, forcing hundreds of residents on this precarious stretch of the California coast to evacuate and authorities to shut its main roadway.

The fire started Friday night in a steep canyon and quickly spread toward the sea, fanned by strong winds up to 50 mph (80 kph). The blaze burned at least 2.3 square miles (6 square kilometers) of brush and redwood trees, said Cecile Juliette, a spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“The fire lined up with the wind and the terrain and that gave the fire a lot of energy to make a big run,” she said Saturday.

Authorities made contact with about 500 residents, urging them to evacuate the sparsely populated area between Carmel and Big Sur. More than 250 firefighters from multiple agencies and volunteer groups, aided by water-dropping aircraft, contained about 20% of the blaze by Saturday evening.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-ca ... 648aba2a1a

[caltrek]

Stanford Researchers Identify ‘Double-hazard’ Zones for Wildfire in the West
February 7, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/942655

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Some plants and patches of Earth withstand heat and dry spells better than others. A new Stanford University study shows those different coping mechanisms are closely linked to wildfire burn areas, posing increasing risks in an era of climate change.

The results, published Feb. 7 in Nature Ecology and Evolution*, show swaths of forest and shrublands in most Western states likely face greater fire risks than previously predicted because of the way local ecosystems use water. Under the same parched conditions, more acreage tends to burn in these zones because of differences in at least a dozen plant and soil traits.

The study’s authors set out to test an often-repeated hypothesis that climate change is increasing wildfire hazard uniformly in the West. “I asked, is that true everywhere, all the time, for all the different kinds of vegetation? Our research shows it is not,” said lead author Krishna Rao, a PhD student in Earth system science.

‘Double-hazard’ zones
The study arrives as the Biden administration prepares to launch a 10-year, multibillion-dollar effort to expand forest thinning and prescribed burns in 11 Western states.

Previous research has shown that climate change is driving up what scientists call the vapor pressure deficit, which is an indicator of how much moisture the air can suck out of soil and plants. Vapor pressure deficit has increased over the past 40 years across most of the American West, largely because warmer air can hold more water. This is a primary mechanism by which global warming is elevating wildfire hazards.

*https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01654-2

[caltrek]

Disruption of Cultural Burning Promotes Shrub Encroachment and Unprecedented Wildfires
February 15, 2022

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley ... 2/fee.2395

(Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment) Abstract
Recent catastrophic fires in Australia and North America have raised broad-scale questions about how the cessation of Indigenous burning practices has impacted fuel accumulation and structure. For sustainable coexistence with fire, a better understanding of the ancient nexus between humans and flammable landscapes is needed. We used novel palaeoecological modeling and charcoal compilations to reassess evidence for changes in land cover and fire activity, focusing on southeast Australia before and after British colonization. Here, we provide what we believe is the first quantitative evidence that the region’s forests and woodlands contained fewer shrubs and more grass before colonization. Changes in vegetation, fuel structures, and connectivity followed different trajectories in different vegetation types. The pattern is best explained by the disruption of Indigenous vegetation management caused by European settlement. Combined with climate-change impacts on fire weather and drought, the widespread absence of Indigenous fire management practices likely preconditioned fire-prone regions for wildfires of unprecedented extent.

In a nutshell:

• Historically unprecedented fires in Australia have raised questions about fire management and changes in forest structure since British colonization

• New modeling techniques were used to assess past vegetation change from fossil pollen sequences

• Results show an increase in shrub cover in southeast Australian woodlands following colonial settlement, linked to the suppression of Indigenous burning practices

• Increased shrubbiness, in conjunction with climate change, may have exacerbated wildfires in southeast Australian forests

[weatheriscool]

Florida wildfire prompts at least 600 evacuations and a local state of emergency
Source: CBS News

A wildfire in northwestern Florida has prompted officials to declare a local state of emergency and institute mandatory evacuation orders, officials said Friday. The blaze as of Saturday morning had grown to 1,400 acres and was 30% contained.

600 homes have been evacuated, with two confirmed destroyed and 12 damaged, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Multiple agencies in Bay County and neighboring counties are responding to the fire. More than a dozen tractor plow units are on the ground, multiple helicopters are assisting from the air and more than 200 firefighters are battling the blaze, the Florida Forest Service said.

[snip]

The Florida Forest Service said the fire is burning in the area where Hurricane Michael felled 72 million tons of trees, which "serve as fuel for wildfires." The service warned of an elevated statewide fire danger level coupled with "critically low humidity" for the weekend.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-wi ... emergency/

[caltrek]

U.S. Fires Four Times Larger, Three Times More Frequent Since 2000
March 16, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/946661

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Fires have gotten larger, more frequent and more widespread across the United States since 2000, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder-led paper. Recent wildfires have stoked concern that climate change is causing more extreme events, and the work published today in Science Advances shows that large fires have not only become more common, they are also spreading into new areas, impacting land that previously did not burn.

“Projected changes in climate, fuel and ignitions suggest that we’ll see more and larger fires in the future. Our analyses show that those changes are already happening,” said Virginia Iglesias, a research scientist with CU Boulder’s Earth Lab and lead author of the paper.

To evaluate how the size, frequency and extent of fires have changed in the United States, Iglesias and her colleagues analyzed data from over 28,000 fires that occurred between 1984 and 2018 from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) dataset, which combines satellite imagery with the best available state and federal fire history records.

The team found that there were more fires across all regions in the contiguous United States in 2005-2018 compared to the previous two decades. In the West and East, fire frequency doubled, and in the Great Plains, fire frequency quadrupled. As a result, the amount of land burned each year increased from a median of 1,552 to 5,502 square miles (4,019 to 14,249 km2) in the West and from 465 to 1,295 square miles (1,204 to 3,354 km2) in the Great Plains.

The researchers also took a closer look at the most extreme fire events in each region. They found that in the West and Great Plains, the largest wildfires grew bigger and ignited more often in the 2000s.

[weatheriscool]

Fatal Texas Wildfire Forces Evacuations and Destroys 50 Homes
Source: NY Times

The Eastland Complex fire has killed one person and burned more than 45,000 acres in the central part of the state, officials said.

By Giulia Heyward

At least one person was killed, 50 homes were destroyed and nearly 500 others evacuated in central Texas after a wildfire burned more than 45,000 acres, officials said on Friday.

The wildfire, a set of blazes west of the Dallas-Fort Worth area called the Eastland Complex fire, began on Thursday evening. A deputy with the Eastland County Sheriff’s Office, Barbara Fenley, died while helping people escape, the authorities said.

The blaze was 15 percent contained as of Friday evening, the Texas A&M Forest Service said on Twitter. Firefighting crews had been protecting structures and building fire-containment lines, and planes dropped water and fire-retardant chemicals in the area, it said.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed a disaster declaration on Friday that would allow the state to better help 11 counties affected by the fire. He said more counties could be added.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/us/t ... fires.html

[weatheriscool]

Weather Conditions Continue to Fuel Texas Fires
Source: NY Times

Two firefighters were injured fighting a blaze on Sunday, and more evacuations were ordered.

By Giulia Heyward and David Montgomery

Fueled by unfavorable weather conditions, wildfires forced the evacuations of more areas in Central Texas on Sunday, fire officials said.

Residents of the city of Lipan, about 55 miles west of Fort Worth, were ordered to evacuate as firefighters and two air tankers using retardant were dispatched to confront a new 3,000-acre fire on the border of Erath and Hood Counties.

Two firefighters were injured while fighting the blaze, which has been named the Big L fire, said Lt. Johnny Rose of the Hood County Sheriff’s Office. He did not know the extent of the injuries.

The Big L fire was one of several blazes that threatened the region on Sunday. By Sunday evening, additional crews had arrived at the fire, which had grown to 11,000 acres and was 10 percent contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.



Members of the Midland County Sheriff’s Office rode through Carbon, Texas, on Saturday to round up livestock and horses that had wandered away during the fire.Credit...Dylan Cole for The New York Times

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/us/w ... mplex.html

[weatheriscool]

Colorado wildfire forces evacuation orders for 19,000 people
Source: AP

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Authorities issued an evacuation order for 19,000 people Saturday near a fast-moving Colorado wildfire in rolling hills south of the college town of Boulder, not far from the site of a destructive 2021 blaze that leveled more than 1,000 homes.

The wildfire had grown to 123 acres (50 hectares) by late afternoon with no containment, according to the Boulder Office of Emergency Management. Evacuation orders covered 8,000 homes.

Protected wildland was burning near the Table Mesa neighborhood and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder police said on Twitter. Authorities have called it the NCAR fire.

The fire is in an area where a blaze destroyed 1,000 homes last year in unincorporated Boulder County and suburban Superior and Louisville.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-sc ... 58ef9a057d

[caltrek]

Air Pollution from Western Wildfires Could Triple by End of Century
by Nate Mackay
March 28, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/air-poll ... e-century/

Introduction:

(Courthouse News) — Researchers at Princeton University determined the air pollution from wildfires across the western U.S. could as much as triple by 2100 without climate change mitigation efforts.

According to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers combined results from multiple climate models to predict the different amounts of particulate pollution after three climate change mitigation scenarios. Though a high degree of climate change mitigation would avoid the severest effects, the findings indicate the region is headed for an increase in air pollution stemming from wildfires.

“In the next 20 to 30 years, fine particle pollution over the U.S. Pacific Northwest will increase under all scenarios, even under strong mitigations,” said Meiyun Lin, a co-author of the study.

Even in the strongest climate change mitigation scenario, where the world reaches net-zero carbon emissions around 2050, Lin said wildfire particle pollution will increase by as much as 50% by the middle of the century and then level off through 2100.

Lin said the most “extreme scenario is the pathway we want to do everything to avoid.” Under that climate change mitigation scenario, a fossil fuel-driven economy will double carbon emissions by 2050 and drive them up further throughout the century. This would result in the particle pollution from wildfires doubling or tripling by 2100.

[weatheriscool]

Destructive wildfires rage in New Mexico, Colorado
Source: AP

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN and PAUL DAVENPORT

Firefighters scouted the drought-stricken mountainsides around a New Mexico village as they looked for opportunities to slow a wind-driven wildfire that a day earlier had burned at least 150 homes and other structures while displacing thousands of residents and forcing the evacuation of two schools.

Homes were among the structures that had burned, but officials on Wednesday did not have a count of how many were destroyed in the blaze that torched at least 6.4 square miles (16.6 square kilometers) of forest, brush and grass on the east side of the community of Ruidoso, said Laura Rabon, spokesperson for the Lincoln National Forest.

Rabon announced emergency evacuations of a more densely populated area during a briefing Wednesday afternoon as the fire jumped a road where crews were trying to hold the line. She told people to get in their cars and go.

New Mexico State Police released a statement late Wednesday saying two people have been found dead in a residence. Their identities will not be released until the Office of the Medical Examiner can positively identify them.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-ne ... 195306913c

[weatheriscool]

5,000 under evacuation orders as New Mexico wildfire rages
Source: AP

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

Douglas Siddens’ mother was among those who made it out with just the clothes on her back when a deadly, wind-fueled wildfire ripped through a mountain community in southern New Mexico.

The RV park where she lived was reduced to “metal frame rails and steel wheels,” said Siddens, who managed the site

“I had like 10 people displaced. They lost their homes and everything, including my mom,” he said.

The fire has destroyed more than 200 homes and killed two people since it broke out Tuesday near the village Ruidoso, a vacation spot that draws thousands of tourists and horse racing fans every summer.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-ne ... b4f63bbfc5

[weatheriscool]

'Wall of fire' forces evacuations near Arizona tourist town
Source: AP

By FELICIA FONSECA

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Heavy winds kicked up a towering wall of flames outside a northern Arizona tourist town Tuesday, ripping through two-dozen structures and sending residents of more than 700 homes scrambling to flee.

Flames as high as 100 feet (30 meters) raced through an area of scattered homes, dry grass and Ponderosa pine trees on the outskirts of Flagstaff as wind gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) pushed the blaze over a major highway.

Coconino County officials said during an evening news conference that 766 homes and 1,000 animals had been evacuated. About 250 structures remained threatened in the area popular with hikers and off-road vehicle users and where astronauts have trained amid volcanic cinder pits.

The county declared an emergency after the wildfire ballooned from 100 acres (40 hectares) Tuesday morning to over 9 square miles (23 square kilometers) by evening, and ash rained from the sky. The fire was moving northeast away from the more heavily populated areas of Flagstaff, home to Northern Arizona University, and toward Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, said Coconino National Forest spokesman Brady Smith.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-en ... 4a8056379c

[weatheriscool]

Emergency declaration for multiple wildfires in New Mexico
Source: AP

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed emergency declarations as 20 wildfires continued to burn Sunday in nearly half of the state’s drought-stricken 33 counties.

One wildfire in northern New Mexico that started April 6 merged with a newer fire Saturday to form the largest blaze in the state, leading to widespread evacuations in Mora and San Miguel counties. That fire was at 84 square miles (217 square kilometers) Sunday and 12% contained.

An uncontained wind-driven wildfire in northern New Mexico that began April 17 had charred 81 square miles (209 square kilometers) of ponderosa pine, oak brush and grass by Sunday morning north of Ocate, an unincorporated community in Mora County.

Meanwhile in Arizona, some residents forced to evacuate due to a wildfire near Flagstaff were allowed to return home Sunday morning.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-en ... a0297ca529

[caltrek]

Meet the Forest Microbes that Can Survive Megafires
April 25, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950605

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) New UC Riverside research shows fungi and bacteria able to survive redwood tanoak forest megafires are microbial “cousins” that often increase in abundance after feeling the flames.

Fires of unprecedented size and intensity, called megafires, are becoming increasingly common. In the West, climate change is causing rising temperatures and earlier snow melt, extending the dry season when forests are most vulnerable to burning.

Though some ecosystems are adapted for less intense fires, little is known about how plants or their associated soil microbiomes respond to megafires, particularly in California’s charismatic redwood tanoak forests.

“It’s not likely plants can recover from megafires without beneficial fungi that supply roots with nutrients, or bacteria that transform extra carbon and nitrogen in post-fire soil,” said Sydney Glassman, UCR mycologist and lead study author. “Understanding the microbes is key to any restoration effort.”

The UCR team is contributing to this understanding with a paper in the journal Molecular Ecology.

[wjfox]

Climate change: Record tree losses in 2021 in northern regions

1 hour ago

Tree cover losses in northern regions of the world were the highest on record in 2021, according to new analysis from Global Forest Watch.

Figures for these boreal forests were up 30% on 2020, with wildfires causing massive losses in Russia.

Elsewhere, around ten football pitches per minute of tropical primary forest were lost across the year.

Brazil, once again, led the way with a significant uptick in tree loss associated with agricultural expansion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61248596

[weatheriscool]

Northern NM blaze now approaching 100,000 acres
Source: Albuquerque Journal

The team battling the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire has come to dread Fridays, and for good reason.

A week ago Friday, massive winds set off explosive growth as the Calf Canyon Fire merged with the Hermits Peak Fire into what was then a 42,000-acre blaze.

Over much of the following week, crews began getting their arms around the raging beast — and then came another Friday when extreme winds again caused the fire to explode and burn another 30,000 acres in the course of a day.

Fire officials say the blaze has grown to more than 97,000 acres.

Read more: https://www.abqjournal.com/2494527/nort ... acres.html

[weatheriscool]

'Potentially historic' wildfire event threatens New Mexico, Southwest
Source: Washington Post

Critical-to-extreme wildfire conditions are about to take hold of the southwestern United States and parts of Colorado, leading into what could be a lengthy, multiday and memorable outbreak of wildfires and/or wildfire conditions. Warm to locally scorching temperatures, bone-dry air and strong mountain gusts are set to overlap for several days, part of a summerlike weather pattern that comes without the chance of any meaningful rainfall.

The National Weather Service in Albuquerque is calling it a “dangerous, long duration and potentially historic critical fire weather event.” Tinderbox conditions conducive to the rapid spread of blazes are expected to persist well into next week. Sunday may present the most extreme combination of high winds and hot, dry air.

“New Mexico is facing 100 straight hours of the worst possible set of fire conditions, with high temperatures & extreme winds,” tweeted Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) on Friday. “It is critically important to abide by evacuation orders. Your life & safety is top priority.”

She added: “I ask every New Mexican to do everything you can to prevent any additional fire incident, anything that could cause a spark. No open flames, no campfires, no open grills, no welding, no tossing cigarette butts — please work with us to prevent fires and preserve resources.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/ ... alfcanyon/