A Historical Perspective to Inform Strategic Planning for 2020 End-of-Year Wildland Fire Response Efforts

A severe outbreak of wildfire across the US Pacific Coast during August 2020 led to persistent fire activity through the end of summer. In late September, Fire Weather Outlooks predicted higher than usual fire activity into the winter in parts of California, with concomitant elevated fire danger in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Fire (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 5; no. 2; p. 35
Main Authors: Belval, Erin J., Short, Karen C., Stonesifer, Crystal S., Calkin, David E.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.04.2022
Subjects:
Case studies
COVID-19
Decision making
decision support
Fire fighting
Fire hazards
fire season
Forest & brush fires
Information management
Management decisions
personnel management
Regional development
Resource allocation
Seasons
Strategic management
Strategic planning
suppression
wildfire management
Wildfires
United States > US
California
ISSN:2571-6255, 2571-6255
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:A severe outbreak of wildfire across the US Pacific Coast during August 2020 led to persistent fire activity through the end of summer. In late September, Fire Weather Outlooks predicted higher than usual fire activity into the winter in parts of California, with concomitant elevated fire danger in the Southeastern US. To help inform the regional and national allocation of firefighting personnel and equipment, we developed visualizations of resource use during recent late season, high-demand analogs. Our visualizations provided an overview of the crew, engine, dozer, aerial resource, and incident management team usage by geographic area. While these visualizations afforded information that managers needed to support their decisions regarding resource allocation, they also revealed a potentially significant gap between resource demand and late-season availability that is only likely to increase over time due to lengthening fire seasons. This gap highlights the need for the increased assessment of suppression resource acquisition and allocation systems that, to date, have been poorly studied.
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ISSN:2571-6255
2571-6255
DOI:10.3390/fire5020035