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This paper provides some of the first empirical estimates of the impact of natural disasters on the subcomponents of municipal budgets. We combine detailed municipal financial data from 1990-2015 with data on historical wildfire perimeters in California. We find that wildfires increase both revenues and expenditures. Sales taxes temporarily increase. Property taxes increase to a permanently higher level; this appears due to California law that limits reassessments of property until time of sale. Wildfires also cause a long-term increase in local spending on community development and public safety. The overall impact of wildfires on municipal budgets is negative and substantial. That said, in comparison to the spending by state and federal governments on wildfire suppression and response, municipalities are surprisingly insulated from the costs of wildfires.

Wildfire is a prevalent issue in the southern Rocky Mountains. A large portion of land within the southern Rocky Mountains is federally owned public lands that are extremely prone to wildfire as a result of active wildfire suppression throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Public lands in the United States were originally created to properly manage natural resources, however, throughout the twentieth century outdoor recreation became increasingly prevalent, providing even greater human access to large volumes of forested public lands. This research analyzes the influence that outdoor recreation and human accessibility have on anthropogenic wildfire occurrence and size on public lands in the southern Rocky Mountains, using San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado as the study site. The statistical methodologies of case–control logistic regression analysis, multivariate regression analysis, and descriptive statistics are implemented. Geographic variables are also analyzed to gain a greater understanding of the anthropogenic wildfire regime in this region. Results demonstrate the importance of accessibility on anthropogenic wildfire occurrence and specific activities associated with outdoor recreation that play a major role in directing the pattern of anthropogenic wildfire. The results demonstrate that anthropogenic wildfires occur as a result of activities such as overnight camping in remote portions of the forest, day usage on vehicle trails, and where there are clusters of designated campsites. It is also demonstrated that anthropogenic wildfire pattern is influenced by the geography of the landscape.

Wildland firefighters (WLFFs) perform in adverse environments making rapid adjustments to dietary needs. The National Mobile Food Services (NMFS) contract details WLFF dietary provisions on wildfire incidents. OBJECTIVE Determine the nutrient content of food and drink provided to and consumed by WLFFs under the NMFS contract. METHODS Individual (n = 122) dietary provisions and consumption was recorded during 1 workday. Nutritional analysis of items provided was compared with consumption and the recommended dietary allowance (RDA). RESULTS WLFFs consumed significantly (P

Introduction The purpose of this study was to evaluate heat stress occurring in wildfire management activities with variable environmental conditions. Methods Direct observation and real-time wireless physiological monitoring allowed for weather and physiological metrics, including heart rate, core temperature (Tc), skin temperature, and physiological strain index (PSI), of male (n=193) and female (n=28) wildland firefighters (WLFFs) to be recorded during wildfire management activities. Accelerometry data were used to categorize intensity level of activity. Results Ambient temperature and relative humidity values were used to compute the heat index (HI; n=3891 h) and divided into quartiles (Q1: 13.3–25.1°C; Q2: 25.2–26.4°C; Q3: 26.5–28.9°C; Q4: 29.0–49.1°C). Activity levels remained relatively constant across all HI quartiles. The percentage of time spent performing moderate/vigorous activities was lowest during the hotter Q4 (Q1: 3%; Q2: 2%; Q3: 2%; Q4: 1%). Heart rate, Tc, PSI, and skin temperature associations with HI varied by resource type. Sixty-one percent of WLFFs (n=134) experienced a Tc ≥38.0°C, and 50% of WLFFs (n=111) experienced a PSI ≥6.0. Conclusions Heat stress was prevalent as WLFFs performed job tasks of varying intensities in all ambient conditions. Spontaneous bouts of arduous labor, duration of work shifts, and other occupation characteristics present the possibility for substantial durations of hyperthermia, although no heat-related injuries occurred in this study. Despite chronic exposure to rugged sloped terrain, load carriage, and environmental conditions, self-regulation and individual attention to managing work:rest appears to be the primary management strategy in mitigating excessive accumulation of body heat in this occupation.

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of wildland firefighting on measures of cardiovascular health. The study was carried out in two parts. Part one assessed relationships between years of wildland firefighting and cardiovascular variables (n = 28). Part two looked at cardiovascular variables pre and post a wildland firefighting season (n = 18). Independent of age, a statistically significant relationship between number of seasons firefighting and VO2max was found (r2=.140, p=.048). A statistically significant reduction in VO2max of -4.1 ± 5.7 ml·kg-1 min-1 was witnessed following fire season (95%CI=-6.9 to -1.3, p=.048). Year to date hazard pay was significantly correlated with ankle-brachial index (r=-.474, p=.040). Wildland firefighters who reported >640 h of hazard pay had a greater VO2max reduction than those reporting less hazard pay (-1.7 ± 5.7 ml·kg-1·min-1 vs. -7.1 ± 4.3 ml·kg-1·min-1, p=.037). Wildland firefighting may negatively impact cardiorespiratory fitness and arterial health.

A comparison of traditional and mobile wood pellet mills found that mobile systems had higher production costs. Wildfire suppression costs have consistently exceeded British Columbia’s budget set for such activities. Pelletization of excess wood for bioenergy applications has been proposed as a possible method of reducing the overall costs of fighting wildfires. In this study, a traditional pellet mill produces wood pellets from new, marginal feedstocks for $182.24 ± 24.47 and a mobile pellet production system produces wood pellets for $402.71 ± 24.18 . The traditional pellet mill produces 90,000 with harvest residues being collected in the forest, transported to the pellet mill, dried, chipped, pelletized and then stored. The mobile system collects harvest residues from the forest, transports them to the forest landing where the trailer-mounted mobile pellet system is established and is then ground, pelletized and dried if needed. The mobile system uses a novel high moisture pelletization system and harvest residues to heat the biomass dryer used in the system. The mobile pellet system requires 22 systems to produce 90,000 and each system should relocate 9 times in a year to minimize production costs related to feedstock quality and scarcity. These mobile pellet systems can allow increased forest management in forest areas at high risk for wildfires and reduce the cost of suppressing wildfires in treated areas.

Recovery of struvite at wastewater treatment plants provides a beneficial fertilizer while preventing costly operational issues due to precipitation in pipes, pumps, and digesters. At present, however, sale of struvite as fertilizer is hampered by low revenues. A higher value proposition of struvite is its use in phosphorus-based fire retardants, in which phosphoric acids released at elevated temperatures react catalytically with organic substrates to produce layers of carbon char that smother the flame. In this work, we evaluated the fire retardant performance of wastewater-derived struvite suspended in a low-cost viscoelastic hydrogel carrier (0.68% hydroxyethylcellulose, 0.12% methylcellulose, and 5% colloidal silica nanoparticles). The effectiveness of this formulation was compared to that of a conventional polyphosphate-based fire retardant in thermogravimetric analyses of wood samples and lab-scale burn tests of dry grass. The struvite-based formulation exhibited performance comparable to the polyphosphate retardant while requiring 60% less total phosphorus. Moreover, because struvite is derived from wastewater, applications of struvite in fire retardants can offset demand for mined phosphorus, a finite resource. Analysis of supply and demand for conventional fire retardants in the US indicates that wastewater treatment plants could produce sufficient amounts of struvite-based fire retardants to meet US demands for wildfire suppression while significantly improving revenues over direct struvite fertilizer sales. We conclude that wastewater-derived struvite is a promising green chemistry agent for fire retardants and can contribute to global phosphorus conservation.

This paper analyzes the implications on employment, taxation, and wildfire fuel reduction costs when using mobile pellet mills to remove biomass and reduce wildfire fuels. Wildfire suppression costs in British Columbia have exceeded the set budget in 9 of the last 10 years and the province has only reduced the fuel load on a fraction of the high-risk hectares. Using a novel high-moisture mobile pellet mill allows the production of 89,000 tonnes of wood pellets each year for a price of $293 . Each tonne produced also provides $546 in additional benefits from employment, taxation, and reductions in the cost to perform fuel treatments. The presented research found that 11 employees are needed to operate a mobile pellet mill, with total employment of 242 for 22 systems across BC. The assessed system can also avoid $5.5 million in employment insurance payments. The 22 systems also provide $323,000 in taxable profits and $524,000 from income taxes from employees. Fuel treatment with the researched systems costs $1112 . A cost-benefit analysis shows that the system provides $2.97 in benefits for every dollar invested.

Wildfire management in the US relies on a complex nationwide network of shared resources that are allocated based on regional need. While this network bolsters firefighting capacity, it may also provide pathways for transmission of infectious diseases between fire sites. In this manuscript, we review a first attempt at building an epidemiological model adapted to the interconnected fire system, with the aims of supporting prevention and mitigation efforts along with understanding potential impacts to workforce capacity. Specifically, we developed an agent-based model of COVID-19 built on historical wildland fire assignments using detailed dispatch data from 2016–2018, which form a network of firefighters dispersed spatially and temporally across the US. We used this model to simulate SARS-CoV-2 transmission under several intervention scenarios including vaccination and social distancing. We found vaccination and social distancing are effective at reducing transmission at fire incidents. Under a scenario assuming High Compliance with recommended mitigations (including vaccination), infection rates, number of outbreaks, and worker days missed are effectively negligible, suggesting the recommended interventions could successfully mitigate the risk of cascading infections between fires. Under a contrasting Low Compliance scenario, it is possible for cascading outbreaks to emerge leading to relatively high numbers of worker days missed. As the model was built in 2021 before the emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants, the modeled viral parameters and isolation/quarantine policies may have less relevance to 2022, but nevertheless underscore the importance of following basic prevention and mitigation guidance. This work could set the foundation for future modeling efforts focused on mitigating spread of infectious disease at wildland fire incidents to manage both the health of fire personnel and system capacity.

The current operating model based only on the approach of fire suppression has generated what experts call the “fire-paradox”: the control of all wildfires in the seasons with mild weather generates a fuel load which increases the probability of catastrophic wildfires in the years with extreme climate. Even though the fire has been present on earth long before man, and for at least 440 million years it has been an essential component of many land ecosystems, today wildfires are a recurrent social emergency that modern human and financial resources cannot manage. The present challenges stress the need to enhance the debate on potential solutions according to fire ecology: efficient alternatives to the wildfire suppression at all cost, the use of more traditional landscape management for adaptation of ecosystems under a changing climate, the benefits of prescribing fire to maintain long-term ecosystem services and finally the need to establish a wildfire risk culture through transdisciplinary science and enhance effective societal engagement. The “Fire Ecology Across Boundaries” Congress to be held in Florence from 20 to 23 October 2020 (http://fireacrossboundaries.org/) will be the opportunity to discuss the ecology and management of fire together with top international experts.

Forest landscapes across western North America (wNA) have experienced extensive changes over the last two centuries, while climatic warming has become a global reality over the last four decades. Resulting interactions between historical increases in forested area and density and recent rapid warming, increasing insect mortality, and wildfire burned areas, are now leading to substantial abrupt landscape alterations. These outcomes are forcing forest planners and managers to identify strategies that can modify future outcomes that are ecologically and/or socially undesirable. Past forest management, including widespread harvest of fire- and climate-tolerant large old trees and old forests, fire exclusion (both Indigenous and lightning ignitions), and highly effective wildfire suppression have contributed to the current state of wNA forests. These practices were successful at meeting short-term demands, but they match poorly to modern realities. Hagmann et al. review a century of observations and multi-scale, multi-proxy, research evidence that details widespread changes in forested landscapes and wildfire regimes since the influx of European colonists. Over the preceding 10 millennia, large areas of wNA were already settled and proactively managed with intentional burning by Indigenous tribes. Prichard et al. then review the research on management practices historically applied by Indigenous tribes and currently applied by some managers to intentionally manage forests for resilient conditions. They address 10 questions surrounding the application and relevance of these management practices. Here, we highlight the main findings of both papers and offer recommendations for management. We discuss progress paralysis that often occurs with strict adherence to the precautionary principle; offer insights for dealing with the common problem of irreducible uncertainty and suggestions for reframing management and policy direction; and identify key knowledge gaps and research needs.

Wildfires are expected to increase in number, extent, and severity due to climate change. Hence, it is ever more important to integrate technological developments and scientific knowledge into fire management aiming at protecting lives, infrastructure, and the environment. In this paper, a decision support system (DSS) adapted to the Portuguese context and based on multi-sensor technologies and geographic information system (GIS) functionalities is proposed to leverage operational data, enabling faster and more informed decisions to reduce the impact of wildfires. Here we present a flexible and reconfigurable DSS composed of three components: an ArcGIS online feature service that provides operational data and enables a collaborative environment of users that share operational data in near real-time, a mobile client application to interact with the system, enabling the use of GIS technology and visualization dashboards, and a multi-sensor device that collects field data providing value to external services. The design and validation of this system benefitted from the feedback of wildfire management specialists and a partnership with an end-user in the municipality of Mação that also helped establish the system requirements. The validation results demonstrated that a robust system was achieved with fully interoperable components that fulfill the defined system requirements.

An analysis was conducted on when aerial suppression through direct attack using a helicopter could be ineffective due to a high heat release rate of the wildfire. The analysis consisted of a numerical estimate and where the results were compared with existing operational thresholds on aerial wildfire suppression. It was found that up to a heat release rate of 10000 kW, practically all droplet paths effectively penetrated the plume region. At heat release rates of 12500 and 23000 kW, only the path at an angle to the centreline effectively penetrated the plume region. The calculated results of the analysis were compared with suppression thresholds and found to correspond well in the vertical trajectory case. The findings of the paper could serve as starting point for the development of decision support for aerial wildfire suppression.

Wildland firefighting often involves the creation of a fireline (a break in vegetative fuels), an operation commonly hindered by the break-down of gas-powered chainsaws. Some firefighters may not possess the knowledge and skills needed to address break-downs quickly, which threatens productivity and safety. The Applied Cognitive Task Analysis method was used to examine the troubleshooting process of an expert wildland fire sawyer. This included elicitations of key steps in this process, specific pieces of valuable knowledge, and sources of expertise. These results show that much of the expert understanding of complex faults was developed on-the-job rather than during a formal training program. This study highlights areas where training and job aids may be improved to support wildland firefighters in chainsaw troubleshooting and provides preliminary support of ACTA as a tool for training specialists in this domain.

Much of the western United States is experiencing longer fire seasons with an increased frequency of high-severity fires and fire risk. Fire managers in the southwestern United States have increased efforts to reduce fire risk by managing more fires to meet resource objectives (e.g. thin forests, reduce hazardous fuel loads, and restore the landscape). However, little is known about the situational circumstances and decision space that inform the strategic response to wildland fire. Using generalized and time-to-event modeling techniques, we examined how fire management decisions are reached in a context informed by weather, burning conditions, and subsequent fire behavior. Modeling results captured daily containment probabilities along a gradient from limiting natural conditions to suppression invoked containment. Results inform fire management decisions, future research efforts, and the simulation of wildland fires with resource objectives.

The main aim of the article is to show the usage of spatial data for support of aerial firefighting of forest fires. First, the support of strategic level decision is shown, and after that, the support of the tactical and operational level is demonstrated. The strategic level decisions are supported with various cartographical outputs showing the distribution and trends of the forest fires in the area of the Czech Republic. These maps are based on the data concerning the emergencies collected on the operational centers of the Fire and Rescue Service of the Czech Republic. The created maps serve as a support for the decisions concerning the strengthening of the assets for aerial firefighting of the forest fires. In this way, the spatial data concerning the emergencies, are used to support the strategic decisions. The outcome of these decisions is the public procurement focused on the selection of the aircraft of the private owners, which will bolster the current state assets for wildfires suppression. The operational and tactical level of aerial firefighting of forest fires is supported with the published layer, which contains the selected places for water supply to the aircraft during the forest fire suppression operation. The places were selected on the regional offices of Fire and Rescue Service of the Czech Republic. The data was sent in the form of Office Open XML Workbook (xlsx) (Microsoft Excel table) to the General Directorate. There the data was collected and processed by the Java program into the form of ArcGIS Server feature layer. This process makes the data available through the whole Fire and Rescue Service of the Czech Republic in a standardized manner.

This article tests two hypotheses on whether forest fuel reduction treatments (prescribed burning and mechanical methods) reduce wildfire suppression costs and property damages. Data were collected on fuel treatments, fire suppression costs, and property damage associated with wildfires in United States National Forests over a five-year period throughout the continental United States. The continental U.S. pooled data model results show that overall, prescribed burning reduces suppression cost and both fuel treatment types reduce property damages. Further analysis was done to separate the data into seven geographic regions of the United States. Results of the multiple regressions show that in California and the northern Rockies, mechanical fuel treatments reduce wildfire suppression costs, while only in California did prescribed burning reduce the cost. The second hypothesis tested is that fuel treatments, by making wildfires less damaging and easier to control, may reduce property damage. This hypothesis is generally confirmed for hectares treated with prescribed burning in four out of five geographic regions that had a significant coefficient on prescribed fire. Mechanical fuel reduction had a significant effect in reducing property damage in two of the three regions.

This paper provides analysis of international fire service siege wildfire suppression thresholds and reports on the effect of forest fuel structure, fire weather condition and terrain on the suitability of suppression strategies. Further, this study applies a fire engineering approach whereby siege wildfire behaviour is deterministically assessed against firefighter tenability thresholds. This research is significant as it is the first study to consider human tenability as a factor in determining appropriateness of wildfire suppression strategies and tactics. The results clearly demonstrate offensive siege wildfire suppression involving direct head fire attacks by personnel and appliances exposes firefighters to untenable conditions well in advance of the head fire edge. Accordingly fire services may need to consider earlier instigation of defensive strategies and increased reliance on aerial wildfire suppression.

Although many decades of successful wildfire suppression have resulted in very few losses of life or property in Ontario due to wildfires, frequent evacuation incidents have continued to disrupt many remote First Nations. In 2011, the community of Sandy Lake evacuated due to a wildfire which came within nine kilometers of the community. Residents were airlifted and scattered to eleven cities/towns throughout Ontario and into Manitoba. Using a qualitative community-based research approach, this study examined how issues related to pre-event preparedness and during-event communication influenced evacuation experiences of Sandy Lake First Nation residents. A total of 56 interviews and a focus group discussion were completed with evacuated band members, those who stayed behind, and people who had a management role during the evacuation. The results from the interviews and focus group illustrated that evacuation experience of residents were affected by preparedness and communication issues including a delay in obtaining site-specific and reliable information about the wildfires, a lack of clarity about the protocols to be followed in declaring a community state of emergency, and perceived constraints in government wildfire management policy, that compromised the resilience of the community to the disruptive impacts of the evacuation. The lack of community preparedness to respond to wildfire emergencies was found to be a main factor increasing vulnerabilities to this wildfire emergency. The results of this study underscore the importance of building local preparedness to hazard and emergencies by taking into account the unique characteristics of Indigenous communities.

As the natural fire regimes of Canada's Boreal forests have been transformed by dynamic social, economic, ecological and political drivers, wildfires have become a locus of increasingly complex land management decisions. But while, in Canada and elsewhere, social researchers have examined communities at risk of experiencing wildfire, the agencies and practitioners responsible for wildfire management have thus far been underrepresented in empirical inquiry. This article presents a case study of wildfire management in northern Alberta, examining how different forms of knowledge and experiences were incorporated into the creation of a new plan to support decision-making. Findings from interviews and a workshop confirm that 'science' in such applied contexts is not a pure entity. Instead, the objects represented internally and externally as 'scientific' have necessarily been shaped by the values and priorities of the individuals and institutions that have constructed them. Further, this case study revealed social factors that support the maintenance of institutional status quos, such as the commitment to total wildfire suppression policy, despite broad agreement amongst participants about superior alternatives. These findings support the need for further research on wildfire management agencies, and suggest that progress in wildfire management may be limited by mismatched expectations of 'good' policy between stakeholder groups and by practitioners' conceptions of their own institutional identity.

In temperate ecosystems, fire management involving prescribed burning and wildfire suppression often causes a shift in fire season from hot and dry summer conditions to cooler, moister conditions in spring or autumn. The effects of this change on seed dispersal by wind after fire are unknown. However, calmer wind conditions and increased standing vegetation after fires in cooler seasons may reduce seed dispersal following fire. We studied seed dispersal in different seasons for a serotinous obligate-seeder, Callitris verrucosa, growing in a semi-arid environment in South Australia. We measured primary (wind-borne) and secondary (on-ground) seed dispersal during spring, summer and autumn, using empirical observations and modelling based on detailed measurement of wind characteristics. At comparable horizontal wind speeds, primary dispersal was greater in summer compared to spring and autumn. Secondary dispersal was similarly short in all three seasons when vegetation cover was high, but when cover was low, seeds travelled much further in summer than in the other two seasons. A shift in the seasonal timing of seed release can decrease dispersal distances of serotinous obligate seeders, which is likely to reduce gene flow and the ability to colonise new sites. This can lead to changes in population and community structures which may further affect fire patterns. These findings could be applicable to other serotinous obligate seeding plant species found in other families such as Proteaceae, Myrtaceae, Pinaceae and Cupressaceae.

Containing and controlling wildfire incidents is one of the main functions of fire management. Understanding how this can be done effectively and efficiently informs many of the preparatory activities undertaken by fire management agencies to limit the impact of wildfires. This second article within a two-part series summarizing the current understanding of wildfire suppression effectiveness details research undertaken at incident and landscape scales and discusses their motivations and implications. The series is concluded with a discussion of the major suppression effectiveness knowledge gaps at all scales with suggestions for addressing them. Research across incidents has been undertaken as case studies of specific events and economic analyses of productivity during the containment of large fires. Some recent case studies have demonstrated the benefits of fuel management for suppression effectiveness, while economic analyses have identified the contributions of different resource types to containment and found that productivity models developed using non-wildfire data grossly overpredict operational productivity. Research at the landscape scale has identified the variables important for fire outcomes, such as initial attack success and the effectiveness of fuel management programs, and has also identified the benefits of suppression policy changes using long-term datasets. There are many ways that wildfire suppression effectiveness can be defined and measured. These depend on the scale and purpose that they are considered. Suppression effectiveness evaluation is challenging at most scales as it is can be undertaken for a range of objectives, is affected by many dynamic broad ranging variables, and because data is difficult to acquire. As a result, there are still many gaps in our understanding and new methods are required to capture the data required to fill these.

The effectiveness of wildfire suppression is difficult to define as it can be assessed against different objectives and at a range of scales. The influence of multiple variables make it a challenge to research. This two-part series presents a synthesis of the current understanding of the effectiveness of wildfire suppression determined from studies of observational data and incident records. Effectiveness is considered on four scales: flames, firelines, whole incidents, and landscapes. This first part provides an overview of wildfire suppression followed by a synthesis of research undertaken at flame and fireline scales. Wildfire suppression research has been undertaken at flame and fireline scales for different reasons. Laboratory experiments have been the main means for investigating suppression at the flame scale. These have been used to compare wildfire suppression chemicals and identify those that are most effective. Field observations of sections of fire perimeter have been used to investigate resource productivity and the effects that suppression efforts have on fire behavior to evaluate specific resource types and tactics. There are many ways that wildfire suppression effectiveness can be defined and measured. These depend on the scale and purpose that they are considered. Wildfire suppression effectiveness research conducted at flame and fireline scales has provided a means for comparing and evaluating wildfire suppression chemicals and firefighting resources. These scales provide an opportunity for many variables to be closely examined. Laboratory experiments, typically conducted in combustion wind tunnels, allow some variables to be investigated in isolation and provide a means for repeated testing at the flame scale. Field observations and measurements made at the fireline scale can provide a realistic setting representative of the wildfire conditions where their findings will be applied.

Author(s): Botti, Steve; Nichols, Tom | Abstract: In the 1960s the US National Park Service developed a policy designed to restore the natural ecological role of wildland fire. The policy was driven by growing understanding of ecosystem management benefits, as reflected in the 1963 Leopold Report on wildlife management in national parks. The new policy was designed to reverse decades of aggressive wildfire suppression that had caused disruptions in habitats and vegetative communities, and unnaturally high wildland fuel accumulation. More than 50 years later, the policy has largely failed to achieve its goals. This failure is due not just to climate change and the rise of new fire regimes dominated by mega-fires. It also was due to a lack of clear and unified organizational commitment by many parks, along with continued administrative comfort with fire suppression-oriented thinking, particularly during the window of opportunity between 1970 and 2000. During this time program emphasis shifted from ecosystem restoration to hazard fuels reduction, and program direction from Natural Resources staff to Emergency Services personnel. Efforts to establish a balance between emergency response thinking and resource management thinking largely failed due to institutional barriers and funding/staffing decisions driven by the threat of large wildfires. Park managers became wary of natural fire regime restoration efforts after the 1988 Yellowstone fires and the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire. This accelerated the demise of the Leopold Report vision of restoring and maintaining the ecological role of natural fire. In its place, wildfire suppression philosophy again became predominant, as reflected in the National Fire Plan with its focus away from ecological fire use and toward hazard fuel reduction in support of protecting the wildland urban interface. Restoring the Leopold Report vision requires an interdivisional commitment by Park emergency response and resources management organizations, guided by leadership at all organizational levels. It now may be timely to establish an NPS advisory board on wildland fire management similar to the one that produced the Leopold Report. This Board should review wildland fire policy implementation over the past 58 years, determine whether the ecosystem restoration paradigm is still valid, and if so, then the types of leadership and organizational changes required to achieve it.

The recent huge technological development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide breakthrough means of fighting wildland fires. We propose an innovative forest firefighting system based on the use of a swarm of hundreds of UAVs able to generate a continuous flow of extinguishing liquid on the fire front, simulating the effect of rain. Automatic battery replacement and extinguishing liquid refill ensure the continuity of the action. We illustrate the validity of the approach in Mediterranean scrub first computing the critical water flow rate according to the main factors involved in the evolution of a fire, then estimating the number of linear meters of active fire front that can be extinguished depending on the number of drones available and the amount of extinguishing fluid carried. A fire propagation cellular automata model is also employed to study the evolution of the fire. Simulation results suggest that the proposed system can provide the flow of water required to fight low-intensity and limited extent fires or to support current forest firefighting techniques.

Wildland firefighting is inherently dangerous, fraught with simple mishaps to inevitable fatal outcomes for the unwary. Established, sound rules and guidelines will continue to work to keep Wildland Firefighters and Firefighters safe. Human factors, consistent across all work groups, are variously broken down into human errors, human failures, error chain(s), etc. making fatalities unavoidable. All we can do is reduce them. Nineteen Prescott FD Granite Mountain Hot Shot wildland firefighters and supervisors perished on the June 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona. Inexplicably, they left their Safety Zone during explosive fire behavior. A Serious Accident Investigation Team found, “… no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol.” The authors and others infer: the final, fatal link, in a long chain of bad decisions with good outcomes. Among other things, tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, goal fixation, non-critical thinking, destructive goal pursuit, Groupthink, and “Friendly Fire” are discussed.

Aerial firefighting resources are an integral part of modern wildfire suppression strategies. In many locations around the world where wildfires pose a serious threat, firefighting authorities have access to fleets of different aircraft. These can be used to provide support to land-based resources during the extended attack of existing fires or to quickly suppress recent spark events during the initial attack phase. As the amount of time that a fire has been burning is a predictor of the amount of damage it causes, fast aerial response times are critical. Therefore, there is significant value in dynamically repositioning aircraft to airbases and fires over the course of a fire day or fire season. In this paper, we devise one such approach based on model-predictive control to make relocation decisions at various times over a single day. These relocation decisions are based on solving an underlying Mixed-integer linear program (MILP) so as to minimize expected damage over a lookahead horizon. The inputs to this program are updated at each of these decision times based on prevailing stochastic weather conditions, the current state of fires in the region, and the current assignment of aircraft to bases and fires. The expected fire damage profiles used in this model are based on empirical data that is pre-computed for the region of interest. We apply our model to a scenario in Central Chile and show that with careful parameter selections it is possible to make improved relocation decisions to reduce the expected fire damage in a region using this approach.

Wildfire susceptibility maps are a well-known tool for optimizing available means to plan for prevention, early detection, and wildfire suppression in Portugal, especially regarding the critical fire season (1 July − 30 September). These susceptibility maps typically disregard seasonal weather conditions on each given year, being based on predisposing variables that remain constant on the long-term, such as elevation. We employ logistic regression for combining wildfire susceptibility with a meteorological index representing spring conditions (the Seasonal Severity Rating), with the purpose of predicting, for any given year and ahead of the critical fire season, which areas will burn. Results show that the combination of the index with wildfire susceptibility slightly increases the capability to predict which areas will burn, when compared with susceptibility alone. Spring meteorological context was found better suited for predicting if the following summer wildfire season will be more severe, rather than predicting where wildfires will effectively occur. The model can be updated yearly after the critical wildfire season and can be applied to optimize the allocation of human and material resources regarding the prevention, early detection and suppression activities, required to reduce the severity of wildfires in the country.

Wildland fires frequently happen and develop in hard-to-reach regions, fast covering large areas due to the presence of ignitable matters together with beneficial meteorological circumstances. Human actions and natural events are the main reasons for the appearance of wildland fires. Our study focusses on the idea of using natural resources, namely water assets on the fire-affected territory. Since fire suppression is primarily performed with water, the provision of sufficient water sources in the proximity of the burning area is critical. An investigation of the hydrological characteristics of the territory is needed, especially in the driest months, when most of the wildfire events are expected to occur. The construction of a support point for fire-fighting water supplies in the wildland territories is also a requirement for building a network of water assets in the wildland territories.

Contingency firelines can be used to back up primary lines to increase probability of fire containment, decrease fire losses, and improve firefighter safety. In this study, we classify firelines into primary, contingency, and response lines. We design a modeling process to iteratively implement a mixed integer programming model to evaluate contingency strategies under randomly generated fireline breaching scenarios. Our objectives include: (1) gaining conceptual understanding of the effectiveness of using contingency containers in a fireline network, and (2) suggesting future data collection and model improvement directions to support contingency strategy planning. We evaluate the effectiveness of several model generated containment strategies: only responding to observed primary line breaches, being proactive by implementing a system‐level contingency plan, or constructing contingency lines to back up a proportion of a primary container. Data from the Ferguson Fire in California are used to derive a set of hypothetical test cases with different fireline breaching risks to support sensitivity analysis. For comparison, we also test a contingency plan inspired by the Ferguson Fire operation. Analyses suggest that a contingency plan will provide the greatest benefit when fireline breaching risk is high. This study also suggests there are significant data and knowledge gaps that must be addressed to make the model suitable for operational use.

The current work presents the operational implementation and evaluation of a rapid response fire spread forecasting system, named IRIS, that was developed to provide support to the tactical wildfire suppression activities of the Hellenic Fire Corps. The system was operationally employed during the 2019 fire season in Greece, providing on-demand wildfire spread predictions for 17 incidents. Satellite remote sensing data were employed for quantitatively assessing IRIS&rsquo, s predictions for eight selected events. Our results suggest an overall satisfactory model performance. More importantly, this study demonstrates that, as coupled fire-atmosphere modeling becomes an increasingly popular approach, the respective models have great potential to support operational agencies and wildfire managers during the incident phase.