The 2022 Wildland Fire Thread

We just had a 3,000+ acre fire in the wheatfields of Eastern Washington.

Here's a link to the National Situation Report. So far, we've had a few tough fires but have not been overwhelmed like in recent years. Right now, we have 15 incident management teams committed as opposed to the 55-60 we've seen at times over the past few years.
https://www.nifc.gov/nicc/sitreprt.pdf

 

The European fire year has been brutal. There has been an increase of 56% in acres burned over the previous record.

It will be broken by another year's worth of fire that's not too far away.

 

Nice graphic showing the drought effects on river flows across Europe. Obviously, the drier the soil the drier the vegetation and dry vegetation burns.

 

Loire River in France.

 

A cooler, wetter spring really helped the Western US this year and it looks like we will make it through the 2022 fire year without going to elevated levels of national response. Right now, in late August, we only have 10 incident management teams committed on 17 uncontained large fires. In past years, those numbers have hit 50+ and 100+. There will still be a few more large fires between now and November but we're not hitting the exhaustion wall like we have every year since 2012.

Most of the US acres this year were in Alaska, which had it's 7th largest fire year by acreage with 3.11 million acres burned.

Globally, we're burning an average of Belgium or more of just forested land in recent years, a 100% increase since 2000. 70% of the acres are in boreal forests. That's key because they are not only carbon sinks that turn into net emitters when burned, but burned areas create conditions where the permafrost starts to melt and exposes a huge amount of stored carbon. Russia alone lost 13.3 million acres of tree cover last year. Burned acreage on non-forested land is also up dramatically since 2000.

 

More than a few structures consumed in the Mill Fire late yesterday afternoon. It started at a lumber mill and ran through the community of Weed, CA and then on to other places. Winds were gusting in the mid-30s.




Here's the mill going up at the beginning of the incident:


And a video:

 

Yes, there's pay, retention, retirement, and a host of things, but one issue every firefighting org in the world is facing right now is the disconnect between traditional ways of doing the job and training and the uncertainty changing conditions are presenting. If you've never had to make decisions in a time-compressed environment where lives and livelihoods are at stake, you can't really understand the stress--and then the frustration when the what-should-have-been-right decision based on your experience ends up being not so right. Our experience can no longer be trusted, our assumptions have to be tested constantly. That's tiring, frustrating, and stressful. Even more so when homes and lives are lost.

Additionally, society is putting more and more decisions on the backs of firefighters. We make the decision as to whether a house is defensible, whether a neighborhood should be defended or not, whether the resources it takes to defend a town will be successful, whether doing a certain action creates an acceptable amount of risk for firefighters. That's enormously stressful and while we take refuge in the greater good, why are stupid firefighters making decisions about the greater good in a democracy? It's complete deference to experts and as noted above, our expertise is diminishing every year. These decisions should be made by the community well before the fire starts burning but that discussion is not happening and expectations are rising. Politicians are afraid to have it because if they do, they acknowledge they are aware of the problem and have to fund prevention. Nobody wants to fund prevention as it has no measurables--you can't count the fires you prevent, only the ones you fight. You can also count evacuees, structures burned, FEMA trailers brought in, recovery money, etc. Only after the fact can politicians point to what they got for you, the voter. "Terrible shame and all, but we will come back stronger than ever!" If it never happens, they can't campaign on that and someone else--including the community--will constantly say why are you spending money on something that hasn't happened?

Yeah, I'm a bit cynical but I do know we face a major crisis that more money and resources will not fix. There needs to be a societal change in how we view all aspects of disasters: response, recovery, prevention, and preparedness.

 

Mosquito Fire on the Tahoe National Forest in California.

We'll have an east wind event this weekend which will affect WA, OR, and CA. I'm not sure if it will be as bad as the Labor Day fires of 2020, but there will be fast and large fire growth through Sunday on both existing and new fires. My guess is we'll have at least one major new fire start due to downed power lines.