The National Weather Service in southern California is changing the criteria that triggers a red flag warning for fire danger. In addition to wind speed and relative humidity, the new system will take into account local geography and terrain. Weather forecast offices across the state will have different criteria. Check out the full story in the LA Times, but here is a video of an LA Times reporter explaining the new system.
The Missoulian has an article about how Norman Maclean, in researching the fire behavior on the Mann Gulch fire in 1979, sought out Dick Rothermel of the Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula when Maclean was working on his “Young Men and Fire” book. Here is an excerpt from the article:
Rothermel, an aeronautical engineer, had developed a fire-spread model at the lab in 1972. It’s a model that, while technologically enhanced over the years, remains the engine of tools used to predict fire behavior today.
At first his involvement with Maclean’s book was “something I really didn’t want to do,” Rothermel told a packed room Thursday at the fire sciences lab’s weekly seminar series.
Controversy still swirled around the Mann Gulch fire, in which 13 firefighters died, and he had no desire to reopen emotional wounds. But the tragedy was what spawned establishment of the research lab itself, which recruited Rothermel shortly after it opened in 1960.
“We set up a communication that went on for several years while (Maclean) was back at the University of Chicago, and when he’d come to Seeley Lake and hang out, he’d come and see us,” Rothermel said.
They went to work on Mann Gulch questions that Maclean felt remained unanswered. How did the fire near the Missouri River north of Helena get from a ridge above the firefighters to the mouth of the gulch below? Where did the men go and why couldn’t they escape? Did the escape fire that saved foreman Wag Dodge’s life overtake his own crew?
“We never could get it straight, in (Maclean’s) mind anyway, as to just what happened until finally I worked out a diagram,” said Rothermel.
The graph shows the rate of spread of the fire and the rate of travel of the men, and how “they finally meet in a race that couldn’t be won,” he said. Maclean used it in “Young Men and Fire.” In 1993, the Forest Service published the chart along with Rothermel’s own assessment of the day in a 10-page pamphlet called “Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn’t Be Won.” Rothermel has high praise for Maclean’s work, calling it “an almost poetic rendition of what happened that day.”
“Norman was kind of a feisty little guy, and he was an English professor,” Rothermel said, recalling the days of scientific discussion with Maclean and fellow fire scientist Frank Albini.
“Norman would look at us and we’d get into ‘rate of spread’ and ‘flame lengths’ and ‘heat content,’ and pretty soon his eyes would glaze over. He’d start saying how strong these young men were. His main thought in this book was the young men themselves, and the tragedy that occurred.”
Rothermel retired from the fire lab 15 years ago. When Norman Maclean died in 1990 the book that he had worked on for 14 years was still not finished, but his son, John N. Maclean completed some editing on the book and it was published in 1992.
As far as we know, there is no vegetation on Saturn that can be ignited by lightning, so there’s very little chance of a wildland firefighter being sent there to fight fire. But for the first time, lightning has been photographed someplace other than on our comfy little third rock from the Sun we call Earth.
This video was captured by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. It was recorded over a 16-minute period and is compressed into the 10 seconds you will see below.
Here is a photo of the convection column generated by the volcano in Iceland…not unlike a wildfire from this vantage point.
The Mille Lacs County Times wrote an article about the value of aviation to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in suppressing wildfires. The headline of the story said:
Aviation valuable tool for DNA
That is news to us.
Here is a screen capture of the article, in case it disappears.
If you are going for a job interview, it’s probably best to not set the place on fire. I’m just sayin’.
Here is an excerpt from BBC News.
An Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation.
Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview.
As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up.
“It sounded almost like a firecracker or something like that,” he said.
“Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt,” he told Australian radio.
Perplexed firemen evacuated the building and cut its electricity supply, thinking the burns could have been caused by a power surge.
“There were several scorch marks in the carpet, and we could hear a cracking noise – a bit like a whip – both inside and outside the building,” said fire official Henry Barton.
Mr Clewer said that after leaving the building, he scorched a piece of plastic in his car.
His clothes were measured by firemen as carrying an electrical charge of 40,000 volts, the Reuters news agency quoted Mr Barton as saying.
The fire official added that the charge was close to being high enough to cause the items to spontaneously combust.
“I’ve been firefighting for over 35 years and I’ve never come across anything like this,” he said.
The story does not say if Mr. Clewer got the job.