Lab 7: LA Station Fires

Above I have two maps, one is a reference map of Los Angeles county, with a hill shade of the region, along with the major highway and road system mapped out in white, with the area of the 2009 station fires outlined (each outline represents a day of the fire, starting August 29th going through September 2nd.) The second map is more zoomed in towards the fires, with the slope of the area shaded. The outline colors of the fire were changed because the orignial colors were difficult to tell apart from the slope colors, with red being the highest slope and green being the flattest.

The Station fire which we are focusing on, took place in Northern LA county, and burned around 160,000 acres and began in late August and continued through October (due to some rainfall) and ended up be coming the 10th largest in California history. As the fire grew, it came to threaten nearby Pasadena, La Crescenta, Glendale, La Canada Flintredge, and Altadena to just name a few. Mandatory evacuations were initially imposed, but by the end of the first week of September, the residents were allowed to return back home.(Wikipedia) To many, the fire seemed surreal, with photos capturing images that looked not of this world, some even compared it to the hellish realm of "Mordor" in the Lord of the Rings for it's unending flames that continued into the night. (boingboing.net) Though the origins of the fire were intially unknown, it was discovered that arson may have been the cause. (Wikipedia, Inciweb).

Slope is one of several factors (among altitude, solar exposition, and overall surroundings) which determines the type of climate, vegetation cover, and wind pattern. According to Viegas' article slope is "the main topography element affecting directly the fire propagation." The rate of the fire climbing increases the larger the slope (2910). And this theory is tested to be true; if we examine my map more closely we can see that indeed the fire grows in the direction of the slope, and from the articles I have read and what I heard on the news, it grew at an astounding pace.

So if we examine my second map more closely, we can see that the first ring of fire begins on an area of relatively high slope (it's not green- its red/orange/yellow), and as the fire increases, it increases in the direction the slope is going (North), and heads in that direction, it does not head south, were the slope is minimal and relatively flat (green), but towards the hills where the slope is going up, and the fire continues to the climb upwards along this slope. I imagine that if the fire were not contained that it would continue to climb upwards, and eventually pan out laterally, to the other few areas of high slope and climb over those foothills too.

And so we can see that slope is one of the major aspects of the propagation of this Los Angeles Station Fire, and that the evidence shows us that indeed the fire followed the slope of the mountains in its course. And though it is not the reason the fire started or the only reason the fire grew so quickly (chapparal also played a great role), slope can definitely help us predict where the fire is going to spread next.



Downloads from:
http://gis.ats.ucla.edu/ (LA county, highways)
http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/?p=1055 (Station fires)


Information From:
"2009 California Wildfires" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_California_wildfires. 12/1/2009


"All Station Fire Perimeters". Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS. 9/02/09. http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/?p=1055. 12/1/09.

"Incident Overview. " Incident Information Web. http://inciweb.org/incident/1856/. 12/1/2009.

"2 Firefighters Die as Los Angeles Wildfire Rages" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/us/31fires.html. 12/1/2009


" Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fire"
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/01/straight-outta-mordo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29. 12/1/2009

Viegas, Domingos Xavier. "Fire Dynamics" Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 356, No. 1748, The Royal Society(Dec. 15, 1998), pp. 2907-2928