Lab 7 - Fire Mapping

The station fire was one of the biggest fires within the recent years to occur in Southern California. Figure 1 is a reference map of the Station fire perimeter and encompasses not only the map area near the fire, but also areas where the smoke from the fire was visible. The bellowing tower of smoke was visible from areas as far south as Commerce and Montebello. The reference map also chronicles the progress of the fire over the span of about a week - with the lighter color representing the area first burned and slowly progresses to a darker shade of color to illustrate the expansion of the fire.

Figure 2 and 3 are the hillshdae map and aspect map of the region respectively. The hillshade map merely shows the elevation change and the mountain range of the region with the lighter shade being the higher elevation. The aspect map, on the other hands, shows what direction the sides of the mountain faces. This is useful in that upon closer inspection the majority of the slopes face southward. This is an interesting feature because for one thing, the fire started on the southern slopes and slowly progressed northward, meaning the fire progressed up the slopes during the fire. This phenomenon is important because naturally, fires tend to migrate uphill due to the rising of eat and as it rises it raises the temperatures of the shrubery and will easily ignite the shrubery higher up on the hill. Hence, this becomes the rationale behind the station fire - the fire expanded northward - partly due to the increasing elevation of the mountain northward and the concentration of fuel source located to the North.

Figure 4 is a map of fuel load found in the area. Although its rather difficult to see on the map, there is a ceoncentration of more flammable material that is located to the North, in the mountains. The urban areas to the south of the moutain contained only a small amount of natural fuel sources due to the urbanization and destruction of th elocal vegetation in the development of the area. As a result, the fuel load is more prevalent in the mountain ranges - with a large source of oak and pine trees - providing adequate fuel for th fire to expand farther.

Figure 5 is the map of urban area plotted in the same region as the fire perimeter. As illustrated by the map, there is actually some overlap between the urban area and the fire itself. During the fire itself, the nearby communities were in danger but some were actually destroyed (but most were safe. If we look at both figure 4 and figure 5, the fuel load type found is the urban areas are not as volatile as the load found in the mountain. The natural vegeation in the mountain were found in large abundances that helped the fire expand, while the urban areas lacked such volatile fuel load, hence the reason why the fire more easily spread to the North.

The Station fire ultimately burned approximtely 250,000 acres of land within the span of four weeks. The fire had the largest growth within the first week due to the large amount of fuel load found in the mountains. And due to the steep elevation of where the fire was burning, the management of the fire itself was rather difficult as the elevation became too difficult for firefighters to handle. Ultimately, the fire only destroyed 89 homes but threatened up to 12,000 homes at one time. The fire burned for about 49 days before finally reaching 100% containment on October 16, 2009. The Station fire is actually the largest fire in the Los Angeles area up to date.

Sources:
"ANF Station Fire FAQs 11 04 09 Final.pdf." Angeles NF - Station Fire Burned Area Emergency Response - BAER Implementation FAQ.

"CAL FIRE - Incidents." Fire Information. Web. 27 Nov. 2009. .

"National Map LANDFIRE Viewer." National Map/USGS Databse.


"Station Fire Threatens Hundreds Of Homes But Officials Believe Mount Wilson Is Out Of The Woods - cbs2.com." CBS 2 - KCAL 9 - Los Angeles - Southern California - LA Breaking News, Weather, Traffic, Sports. Web. 27 Nov. 2009. .


"U.S. Forest Service report: Station fire terrain too steep to fight safely | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times." Top of the Ticket | Karl Rove talks about Sarah Palin -- and Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times. Web. 27 Nov. 2009. .