Category: Wildland

  • Climate Propelling CA Wildfires to Higher Elevations

    Climate Propelling CA Wildfires to Higher Elevations

    Experts see a worrisome trend related to climate change as California’s wildfires are raging at ever-higher elevations that were once too wet to burn.

    September 14, 2021 – By Hayley Smith – Source Los Angeles Times

    Just hours before the Caldor fire threatened to level the resort town of South Lake Tahoe, the massive blaze performed a staggering feat: burning from one side of the Sierra to the other.

    It seared through crests and valleys, over foothills and ridges — and also at elevations of 8,000 feet or higher.

    Ash and smoke rained down on the Tahoe basin and sent thousands fleeing from its soot-darkened shores as the fire skirted a towering granite ridge many believed would be a buffer from the flames. But the fire kept climbing higher, jumping from tree to tree and spewing wind-whipped embers that landed, in some cases, more than a mile away.

    Experts said the fire’s extreme behavior is part of a worrisome trend driven by the state’s warming climate, in which rapid snowmelt and critical dryness are propelling wildfires to ever-higher elevations, scorching terrain that previously was too wet to burn and threatening countless residents.

    “What we’re seeing is that these fuels at high elevations that typically weren’t able to carry a fire, now are able to carry fire,” said John Abatzoglou, an associate professor of climatology at UC Merced and coauthor of a recent study about wildfires at higher elevations. “That’s allowing these fires to effectively reach new heights.”

    The study, published in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that climate warming over the last few decades has exposed an additional 31,400 square miles of U.S. forests to fires at higher elevations.

    It also found that between 1984 and 2017, fires in the Sierra Nevada advanced in elevation by more than 1,400 feet, surpassing some previously dependable moisture barriers.

    Of the 15 ecological regions researchers studied, the Sierra Nevada was among three that saw the greatest upslope advances, along with the southern and middle Rockies.

    “We do see in the Sierra Nevada that fires have increased in terms of their burned area over the past 40 years,” Abatzoglou said. “What’s novel here is that we’re documenting an additional shift in the elevational bands where those fires are occurring.”

    Before the year 2000, it was rare for a forest in the Sierra Nevada to burn above 8,200 feet, Abatzoglou said. In the years since, there has been an eightfold increase in forested burned areas at that elevation. Both the Caldor fire and the Dixie fire — the state’s second-largest wildfire on record — passed that elevation threshold.

    One of the most extreme examples, the 2020 Cameron Peak fire in Colorado, blazed at above 12,000 feet elevation and jumped the Continental Divide.

    That extreme behavior may partially explain why the Caldor fire was able to jump the granite ridge overlooking the Tahoe basin, Abatzoglou said, noting that parched fuels and hot conditions are providing more “real estate” for fire to progress into higher elevations and reducing physical barriers, such as wetter forests that would resist burning.

    It also helps explain how the Caldor and Dixie fires became the first two fires to burn clear through the Sierra.

    “Two times in our history, and they’re both happening this month,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Chief Thom Porter said. “We need to be really cognizant that there is fire activity happening in California that we have never seen before.”

    Mark Schwartz, a professor emeritus at UC Davis, noted that the Dixie fire expanded rapidly as it crested and came down the east side of the Sierra. It also burned into Lassen Volcanic National Park, where it scaled some elevations of 8,500 feet or higher.

    “As fire expands into higher elevations, we run a higher risk of fires going up and over the crest of mountain ranges, then back down the other side,” said Schwartz, who co-wrote a 2015 study about the increasing elevation of wildfires in the Sierra Nevada.

    Some of the peaks and ridges near South Lake Tahoe are well over 8,000 feet and sparsely populated with fir trees. But dried vegetation is primed for ignition, enabling some fires to climb higher and send more embers aloft.

    “This is dangerous,” Schwartz said, “because controlling wildfire has often relied on containment at lower elevations, letting fires run out of fuels and fire weather at higher elevations.”

    There are several factors that could be contributing to this shift, but researchers said the primary cause is the warming trend that is exacerbating the drought and drying out vegetation across the state. The vast majority of high-elevation fires in California are being ignited by lightning — which is more apt to start a fire when it strikes arid vegetation.

    “There’s a good relationship between how warm and dry the vegetation is across the broader Sierra, and just how high those fires can carry up into these montane systems,” Abatzoglou said.

    Higher elevations generally have snowpacks that last into June. When those melt, they bring an additional burst of water that keeps the vegetation wet. But with warmer temperatures and an ongoing drought, much of that moisture has disappeared.

    On April 1, the date when California’s snowpack is typically at its maximum, the California Department of Water Resources recorded only 59% of its average depth. Rain in the Northern and Central Sierra was even lower, at 50% of average, which tied 2021 for the third-driest water year on record.

    Mojtaba Sadegh, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Boise State University and another of the fire study’s authors, said the region’s snowpack is entering into a dangerous cycle with higher-elevation fires.

    “These high-elevation mountains are water towers for us,” Sadegh said. “Most of our water in the West is coming from that snowpack.”

    When a fire burns high-elevation trees, it removes some of the canopy shading the snowpack and opens it to more melting sunlight, he explained. That same process also changes the reflectance of the surface, exposing more dark ground and evaporating more water.

    It’s a cycle that can change both the quantity and the quality of water delivered to the state’s reservoirs, he said.

    And while warming is the primary driver of the change, both the 2015 and 2021 studies noted that a century of fire suppression in California has allowed an accumulation of vegetation to build up in forests, particularly in lower and middle elevations. When fire does arrive, it has more fuel to carry flames up and potentially over the tops of ridges and mountains.

    It’s something firefighters have observed as they battle the state’s increasingly unpredictable blazes, said Robert Foxworthy, a Cal Fire spokesman. Foxworthy said there’s been a “huge deficit” in the snowpack this year, along with massively desiccated vegetation.

    The dried-out fuel conditions “are leading to these longer-duration fires, and burning at the higher elevations that we haven’t seen years in the past,” he said.

    And while not every fire will soar to such altitudes, exceedingly high fires often are challenging to fight. Many high-elevation fires are in remote areas, and some of the small towns in those areas offer little infrastructure and few roads for access or evacuation. Firefighters are having to hike farther and higher, often with only the supplies they can carry.

    “Very rarely do we have [8,000-] or 9,000-foot elevation and have it be nice and flat,” Foxworthy said. “It’s usually pretty rugged, steep terrain, so obviously that’s going to cause some challenges because that ground is harder to work in.”

    And it’s not only firefighters who are affected by the shift toward more higher-elevation fires. The blazes are also dangerous for the people who live below them; the fires can remove trees that help anchor against avalanches, researchers said.

    Experts are increasingly concerned about the implications of these elevation advances, particularly as officials warn that this year’s fire season — and those to come — could bring even more extreme behavior.

    Schwartz, of UC Davis, said letting fires run uphill has been a sensible approach in the past and has helped protect people and houses at lower elevations. But it is becoming a less secure measure as the state gets hotter and drier, increasing the risk of fire “over-topping” the mountains.

    “We may expect to see more of this sort of fire behavior in the future,” Schwartz said, “and it dramatically expands the workload of containing a remote wildfire, which is already difficult enough.”

    This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

    ©2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

  • CA Wildland Crews Get Assist from Mother Nature

    CA Wildland Crews Get Assist from Mother Nature

    Crews battling the Caldor and Dixie fires in Northern California are expecting milder weather this week as containment continues to increase.

    September 13, 2021 – By Kim Christensen – Source Los Angeles Times

    LOS ANGELES — Firefighters continued to make headway Sunday against two massive Northern California wildfires, officials said, as winds remained light and temperatures hovered only slightly above normal.

    “We are making good progress,” said Marco Rodriguez, public information officer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “We still have a few things to take care of, but overall, the fire hasn’t grown and we are getting hold of it. Things are looking good.”

    Rodriguez said the Caldor fire, to which he is assigned, was 65% contained by Sunday morning, up from 60% on Saturday. The fire has consumed 218,950 acres and destroyed 1,003 structures but grew by only 461 acres overnight.

    On Sunday, increasing numbers of residents were being allowed back into evacuation zones to assess damage to their homes, Rodriguez said. More than 10,000 people have been displaced by wildfires in the region, officials said.

    About 100 miles to the northwest of the Caldor fire, the Dixie fire north of Sacramento was also 65% contained by Sunday morning, up from 62% a day earlier.

    The fire grew by 960 acres since Saturday and has scorched 960,213 acres and destroyed 1,329 structures since it started July 13 near a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. power station in Feather River Canyon. The utility has said it might have been sparked by a tree falling into a power line.

    The National Weather Service predicts calm conditions and temperatures slightly above normal for the next few days for both fire zones, with the possibility of a stronger system moving in by the weekend.

    Light winds from the north and east are expected to lower humidity levels, but otherwise “they don’t look like much of a concern,” said Cory Mueller, a meteorologist with the weather service in Sacramento. No rain or lightning, which had sparked at least eight new starts in the area of the Caldor fire, are in the forecast.

    “It’ll be a pretty quiet week, fire weather-wise, which will be pretty welcome,” Mueller said.

    ©2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

  • Forest Service reluctant to reveal how many firefighters have been hospitalized or killed in the line of duty by COVID-19

    Forest Service reluctant to reveal how many firefighters have been hospitalized or killed in the line of duty by COVID-19

    Wildland firefighters in the Departments of Agriculture and Interior need to be exfiltrated, and given refuge in the Department of Homeland Security

    September 10, 2021 – By Bill Gabbert

    Since March, 2020, 680 U.S. Forest Service employees in the agency’s California Region have tested positive for COVID-19 according to Anthony Scardina on September 7, 2021, the Deputy Regional Forester for State and Private Forestry. Of those, 561 were wildland firefighters, he said. *Stanton Florea, Fire Communications Specialist for the Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center said on Sept. 8 that approximately 918 wildland fire employees within the entire agency have tested positive for the virus.

    Mr. Florea said they do not formally track the number of their employees that have been hospitalized with COVID.

    In the last week word leaked that one of those firefighters who tested positive died due to the coronavirus, and a reporter discovered that another died of an unspecified illness. Subsequently, the Lassen National Forest released a statement late at night September 5 confirming the two fatalities and the names of the deceased, but nothing about the cause of death, dates, or the location.

    Marcus Pacheco was an assistant engine operator who had 13 years of fire experience with CAL FIRE and 30 with the FS. He died of an unspecified illness while working on the Dixie Fire.

    Allen Johnson was a semi-retired 40-year FS veteran and was serving as a Liaison Officer on an Incident Management Team on the French Fire when he contracted COVID.

    During an interview September 7 with Wildfire Today we asked Mr. Scardina how many FS firefighters had died in the line of duty after contracting COVID.

    “I’m not going to report fatalities of our employees when it comes to personal illnesses and other privacy matters in terms of deaths at this point in time,” he said.  “We’re taking a look at those situations, what the review process will be to make sure we understand the facts. And it’s just simply too early out of respect for the family of being appropriate for us to comment at this point in time on those situations.

    The deaths were first officially announced to the public in a manner more formal than Facebook Sept. 7, 2021 by Mr. Scardina at a news conference. It was tweeted by both the FS and the California Office of Emergency Services. The CAL OES recording below had much better audio than the FS version.

    On September 8 Mr. Florea said there have been two deaths of FS fire personnel that are suspected to be related to COVID. Requests for more details, such as names, dates, name of fire, or location did not receive a response, so it is not certain if these two are the fatalities disclosed by Mr. Scardina on September 7, who also provided no details.

    Historically the FS has disclosed fatalities within 24 to 48 hours. The agency usually waits until the families are notified before releasing the names of the deceased, which may take a little longer. Most of the time the general circumstances will also be released, such as hit by a falling tree, vehicle accident, or entrapped by a fire. But for firefighters who contracted COVID on the job, the FS has been extremely reluctant to disclose any information about these line of duty hospitalizations and deaths. The agency’s public information officers whose job is to inform America about FS activities, fires, and circumstances that affect the health and safety of their employees and the public, have been keeping it secret, slow-walking and dissembling when finally responding to requests from journalists about line of duty illnesses and deaths of fire personnel.

    One firefighter told Wildfire Today about something he noticed about supervisory personnel at fires. “I’m noticing that all Incident Management Team members are wearing wristbands and being screened everyday,” he said. “This is not happening for firefighters. They are wearing colored wristbands to show they cleared the screening, but nothing for firefighters.”

    The firefighter said in order to help protect his family when he got home, he asked to get tested while being demobilized from the fire, but the request was denied.

    We are hearing rumblings that some fires are being hit very hard by COVID, with large numbers of personnel testing positive or being quarantined but this is difficult to confirm without the agencies’ cooperation.

    Opinion

    Fighting wildfires has always had a long list of recognized risks. An analysis by the National Interagency Fire Center determined that from 1990 through 2014 there were 440 fatalities in the line of duty among wildland firefighters. The top four categories which accounted for 88 percent of the deaths were, in decreasing order, medical issues (usually heart related), aircraft accidents, vehicle accidents, and being entrapped by the fire.

    The COVID pandemic adds a new category and level of risk from which these firefighters now have to defend themselves. They already wear Kevlar chaps to prevent a chain saw from cutting into their leg, a helmet, leather gloves, hearing protection, safety glasses, fire resistant shirts and pants, and a five-pound foldable shelter to climb under when entrapped by a fire.

    Many of these highly-trained firefighters comprise more than 100 hotshot crews. They are tactical athletes who carry more than 30 pounds of gear up and down steep, rugged terrain for up to 16 hours every day while battling a fire, sometimes miles from the nearest vehicle. They immerse themselves in wildland fire science and fire behavior to anticipate what the fire will do in order to avoid unnecessary exposure to risks.

    But now their employer, the US Forest Service, is reluctant to fully disclose to them a key fact related to their safety — how many of their fellow firefighters have been hospitalized or killed in the line of duty by COVID.

    Ventana Hotshots holding a line on the Monument Fire in Northern California, August, 2021. USFS photo.

    The FS has not been disclosing COVID line of duty deaths the same way they announced that two firefighters were killed in an airplane crash or one died after being hit by a falling tree, all within the last two months.

    COVID among firefighters is not really a “personal illness”, as described Mr. Scardina, when it is caused by a requirement from their employer, for example, to travel across the country and work with 4,809 others at the Dixie Fire in California. For decades the Forest Service and the other four federal land management agencies have, as far as we know, reported all line of duty deaths, including illnesses such as cardiac issues, which might be described as a “personal illness”.

    It is puzzling that the leadership in the federal wildland fire organizations are so scared or reluctant to talk about the effects of COVID on their work force. I don’t see any upside in a doomed-to-fail effort to keep it secret. Maybe it is a holdover thought process from the previous administration whose leader said at least 38 times in 2020 between February and October that COVID-19 is either going to disappear or is currently disappearing.

    By refusing to be transparent about pandemic related illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths on the job, the perception could be that the government has something to hide or they want to restrict the disclosure of news that could reflect negatively on the administration. It would be impossible to argue that withholding this information is in the best interests of the employees. And it degrades the trust that an employee would hope to have in their leadership.

    Far more important than protecting the political future of the President, is being honest with their firefighters about the degree of risk they are taking while serving their country battling wildfires.

    Something has to change

    Federal wildland firefighters work for the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service. The first responsibility of these agencies is the safety of their personnel, including the 15,000 firefighters. If they are so cavalier about this responsibility to not even care how many have been hospitalized in the line of duty, and keep secret as much as possible the extent of how many have gotten seriously ill or died from COVID while working for them, then something has to change.

    The primary job of these five agencies is not fighting fire — it is very far from it. They inspect meat packing plants, issue what used to be called Food Stamps, clean rest rooms, manage visitors, and grow trees. Those at the top of the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior where they presently reside, in most cases have no background in emergency services. It is not in their DNA to worry night and day about those under their command being injured or killed in the line of duty. Career fire personnel understand this.

    The firefighters in these five agencies need to be exfiltrated from the DOI and DOA and given refuge in a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security where top management pays attention to the risks emergency management personnel face. If I was a betting man, I would wager that they care how many of their employees have been killed or hospitalized by COVID, at least publicly to the extent allowed by the White House.

    This new agency of 15,000 wildland firefighters could be named National Fire Service. It could even welcome the structural firefighters that work for the Department of Defense.

  • Firefighting help arrives from Quebec

    Firefighting help arrives from Quebec

    September 10, 2021

    On Wednesday 40 firefighters from Quebec, Canada arrived in the United States to assist in suppressing wildfires.

    In Boise they received an orientation briefing and fire shelter deployment training at the National Interagency Fire Center. The crews have since traveled to the Schneider Springs Fire on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington.

    The National Wildfire Preparedness Level has been at 5, the highest level, for nearly two months. Currently, 99 large wildfires are burning across the western U.S., with 57 of them having a strategy of full suppression.

  • CA Fire Season on Pace to Match Record 2020

    CA Fire Season on Pace to Match Record 2020

    With the massive Caldor and Dixie fires still burning, California’s fire season is on course to match the record 4.2 million acres burned last year.

    September 8, 2021 – By Michael Cabanatuan – Source San Francisco Chronicle

    Sep. 8—With the once-unstoppable Caldor Fire racing to the doorstep of South Lake Tahoe before it was steered away, and the Dixie Fire, the second largest in state history, still raging farther north, it’s been a hellish fire season in Northern California.

    And it’s not over, Cal Fire Director Chief Thom Porter cautioned Tuesday morning.

    “We are on a par with where we were last year,” he said during a briefing. “That’s sobering, that’s the new reality, that’s what we are looking at.”

    Fires burned through roughly 2 million acres by this time in 2020, he said, on the way to a total of 4.2 million acres — the worst in the state’s long history of wildfires. So far this year, fires have again ripped through 2 million acres, with the devastation continuing.

    “We could be in the same boat,” he said. “We’re right in the middle of wildfire peak season.”

    Forecasters predict the next three months will bring more dry weather and bouts of gusty winds, Porter said.

    “Fire activity will continue to grow,” he said.

    Anthony Scardina, a deputy regional forester with the U.S. Forest Service, said hot and windy weather is expected across the state for the next two days.

    Despite warming temperatures, firefighters took advantage of gentler winds to make progress on the Caldor Fire, which began its march toward Lake Tahoe more than three weeks ago. It was 50% contained Tuesday, and most South Lake Tahoe residents have been allowed to return home after a week under evacuation orders.

    But the danger is not over. The fire, which erupted near Grizzly Flats in rural western El Dorado County on Aug. 14 and has burned through 217,000 acres, on Tuesday continued to threaten Kirkwood, the ski resort and small community south of Lake Tahoe on Highway 88.

    While the fire remained calm in South Lake Tahoe, it was still active in Kirkwood, with fire spreading through the tops of trees and wind throwing flaming embers well ahead of the fire, starting spot fires more often than not.

    “For every 10 sparks that land in the forest, nine of them light fire,” said Dominic Polito, a Caldor Fire spokesperson.

    In addition to chasing and snuffing out spot fires, firefighters have been taking advantage of light winds to set backfires and burn off potential fuel around houses and other structures in the area, he said.

    The Kirkwood area and other areas along Highway 88 remained evacuated. Thirty helicopters were expected to make water drops in the area on Tuesday, pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons on the fire.

    Fire crews have extended containment lines from Meyers along Pioneer Trail in South Lake Tahoe, which allowed authorities to lift mandatory evacuation orders for most of the city, particularly the areas near the lake, said Jaime Moore, a spokesperson for the eastern edge of the fire.

    Evacuation orders remained in effect near Heavenly Mountain resort, where crews were extinguishing some hot spots and keeping an eye out for small fires that start when sparks jump containment lines. Meyers and Christmas Valley, where the flames first entered the Tahoe Basin, also remained evacuated, in part due to danger from a large number of charred trees in danger of falling, Moore said.

    “When you’re looking at South Lake Tahoe itself, mostly the threat is gone, but obviously we don’t want to get complacent and say the threat is gone,” he said. “Mother Nature has been working in our favor, but things can change.”

    Crews were keeping an eye on the winds, which had been light and from the west but were forecast to shift to the southwest and may pick up speed, Moore said.

    Mark Ghilarducci, California Office of Emergency Services director, urged returnees to remain vigilant.

    “Even though these area have been repopulated, it’s still important to remember that we have active fire in the areas. We are not out of the woods yet.”

    Forty miles away on the west end of the fire, in addition to Kirkwood, the blaze was most active in the Wrights Lake area, where fire crews have to hike in or get dropped in, Polito said. Much of the area near where the fire started has had evacuation orders lifted, and residents returned over the weekend — except in the town of Grizzly Flats, which was devastated by the fire and is filled with utility crews and tree trimmers.

    Despite the voracity of this year’s fires, Cal Fire’s Porter said firefighters have saved several communities from the flames: South Lake Tahoe, Meyers, Pollock Pines, Sly Park, Hayfork, Willits, Chester, Lake Almanor West, Westwood, Susanville and Janesville.

    “All were protected, all are still intact,” he said. “We’ve been able to herd these fires outside and around the main community corridors. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do that everywhere, but these are some of the large communities that have been protected.”

    The Dixie Fire, which ignited July 14 and is still burning across five counties to the north of the Caldor Fire, was 59% contained on Tuesday. The Dixie Fire had grown to more than 919,000 acres — threatening to rival California’s largest wildfire, the August Complex, which consumed 1,032,648 acres last year.

    Near Auburn in Placer County, evacuations were lifted Tuesday for the Bridge Fire, which was 411 acres and 50% contained after erupting Sunday under the Foresthill Bridge. The Auburn State Recreation Area remained closed.

    (c)2021 the San Francisco Chronicle

    Visit the San Francisco Chronicle at www.sfchronicle.com

    Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

  • EVACUATIONS ORDERED AS FRENCH FIRE GROWS IN KERN COUNTY (CA)

    EVACUATIONS ORDERED AS FRENCH FIRE GROWS IN KERN COUNTY (CA)

    Wildfires erupt in California burning acres of trees and threatening local residential areas.

    August 21, 2021

    The French Fire in Kern County started Wednesday, August 18, around 4:30 pm near the Wagy Flat area, southwest of Wofford Heights on the west side of Lake Isabella.

    On Saturday, August 21, 2021 the French Fire west of Isabella Lake in Southern California exhibited group torching of trees and long-range spotting, but the activity slowed during the night. The blaze has burned 13,341 acres.

    For Sunday firefighters were concerned about the spot fire west of Alta Sierra which is a threat for the residences in that area.

    Additional spread is possible with upslope runs and long range spotting to the east.

    Fire crews have confirmed that eight residences have been destroyed.

    Evacuations are still in effect.

    An evacuation center has been set up at the Kern River Valley Senior Center, 6405 Lake Isabella Blvd., Lake Isabella. Animal Services will assist with sheltering companion animals at the center.