The Station Fire in Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains was the biggest fire in the history of Los Angeles County.1 It started near La Crescenta-Montrose on August 26, 2009 at approximately 3:30pm by arson and was not 100% contained until October 16, 2009 at 7:00pm. Two firefighters died and 22 people were injured due to the fire that extended 160,577 acres of land.2 The fire was originally driven by slope but started being driven by winds around August 31, causing the fire to become more unpredictable.3 As can be seen in Map 1 below, the fire perimeter grew exponentially within a period of five days and expanded mainly northeast.
Map 1: Los Angeles County Elevation Model with Station Fire Perimeters
Smoke from the Station Fire as seen from a NASA satellite4
Map 2 shows the fuel rank of the area affected by the fire as the perimeter increased. Fuel rank is “based on expected fire behavior for unique combinations of topography and vegetative fuels under a given severe weather condition.” It is determined by combining assessments on the fuel model, slope, ladder index (brush density), and crown index (tree density) of the land. An area with a high fuel rank is more easily burned than an area with a low fuel rank because an area with high fuel rank has vegetation and a slope that fires thrive off of.5 My hypothesis is that the Station Fire spread in areas of high to very high fuel rank more quickly than other areas.
Map 2: Station Fire Perimeters with Fuel Rank
As can be seen in Map 2, the area affected by the Station Fire has a high fuel rank especially compared to the rest of Los Angeles County. Since the fire started in an area that could easily be burned due to the dry conditions as well as the large amount of tree cover that retains heat, it is not a surprise that the fire spread so quickly. In addition, the fire seemed to move toward areas of high to very high fuel rank in a faster manner than towards areas of low fuel rank. Most of the moderate fuel rank areas were to the south and east of the origin of the fire; only the east was actually hit by the fire but not until early September. The fire instead moved pretty far north by August 30 and then expanded out from there where a higher level of fuel rank was present.
A big reason why the Station Fire was so hard to contain was because of how fast it spread. Due to the extremely flammable land cover mainly north of the starting location, the fire could easily spread in that direction quickly without much stopping it. Fuel rank is supposed to be used as an identifier to prevent fires where they are most likely to happen; because of this, it should have been obvious that a large and dangerous fire would happen in the San Gabriel Mountains but little was done to prevent it. This is a lesson to future generations to control areas of high fuel rank before hundreds of thousands of acres are burned and lives are lost.
GIS is a great way to analyze incidents like big fires and try to find ways to prevent it from happening again. More analysis can be done through GIS on the basis of the locations of homes relative to the fire where, where firefighters came from, how to keep people safer so as to reduce the amount of deaths and injuries, and much more. GIS is an exciting tool that is already so integrated into our world and I look forward to seeing how it grows even more.
Bibliography:
1"Mount Wilson and the Station Fire." Mount Wilson Observatory. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. <http://www.mtwilson.edu/fire.php>. 2"Station Fire." InciWeb. N.p., 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. <http://www.inciweb.org/incident/ 1856/>. 3Garrison, Jessica, Joe Mozingo, and Alexandra Zavis. "Station fire claims 18 homes and two firefighters." Los Angeles Times 31 Aug. 2009: n. pag. Los Angeles Times. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. <http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/31/local/me-fire31>. 4"Wild Fires in Southern California." The Big Picture. N.p., 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. <http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/wildfires_in_southern_californ.html>. 5"Fuel Ranking Maps and Data." California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. N.p., 2007.
Web. 9 Dec. 2011. <http://frap.cdf.ca.gov/data/fire_data/fuel_rank/index.html#tech1>.
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