The Los Angeles station fire started on august 26, 2009 and raged on for about 2 months before finally being able to be put out. Once the fire was contained it had burned such a large amount of acreage that it was determined to be the tenth largest fire in California history It was so named for the fact it burned very closely to Mount Wilson, on top of which were approximately 20 radio station towers. Unlike most fires that occur that simply burn brush and grassland fuel, this turned into a true crown fire, burning fully grown trees, an occurrence that is rather rare for the amount of heat and power of a fire that is needed to do so is tremendous. This is because trees are far wetter than the simple dry brush that most fires consist of.
The reason this was such a disastrous fire was because it was a crown fire and not simply a brush fire. This comes about from simply misunderstanding and misinforming people about fire ecology. From a young age we are taught that all forest fires are bad fires, being brought up on the teaching of Smokey the Bear. We have to do whatever we can to avoid starting forest fires, and while this may be true on a certain level, it is incorrect on another more important level. By attempting to stop all forest fires, dry brush and fuel accumulate, meaning that should a fire ever start, there is much more fuel and it is much more likely to start a true crown fire. This method of prevention would only ever be possible if we were able to completely stop all fires from ever happening, which would be impossible, as natural not just man-made fires do exist. In this sense then, a reeducation process is needed to inform people of how fire ecology truly works in hopes that we can stop future large scale fires. The first map shows simply the extent of the fire during the first four days of the fire. It shows just how quickly it spread in just four days, covering over 200 square miles by September 3. This shows just how powerful of a fire this was, and how much damage it could have caused.
The second thematic map shows a number of different pieces of infrastructure that could have been affected by the fire. Fortunately, the fire seems to have been rather contained to the forest, not spreading too much into the more populated areas. That being said, by August 31 10,000 homes were evacuated. By September 3, 64 residences had been destroyed, along with 7 other commercial or other buildings. This is an incredible amount of destruction, but it could have been much worse. As detailed by the thematic map, the fire affected very few institutions, hospitals, and airports, but came very close to spreading into areas that contained a number of these.
The main problem that was faced in fighting this fire was the lack of access that firefighters had to the area. I included the highways in the area in the second map as well, showing that there are very few roads that access the area. This lack of accessibility caused serious problems in fighting this fire and is why it took almost two months to put the fire out. At one point two firefighters died from driving off of a 700 foot cliff because of the poor visibility, but more because the road systems were so difficulty to navigate.
http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm
http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/
http://www.lasdblog.org/Pressrelease/PR_Folder/SFUpdateTH-00.pdf
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/31/california.wildfires/index.html
http://www.smokeybear.com/
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