Tom Gill Predicts: December 2018

The Fire Next Time: some thoughts on the recent wildfires in California, lessons learned and implications for infrastructure, disaster resilience, and land management.

-Opinion by Tom Gill

My research as a professor at UTEP doesn’t usually focus on smoke and flames, but something else in the sky: dust, and the hazards and disasters it has provoked, such as the Dust Bowl. But as someone who spent decades living on the outskirts of San Francisco and Sacramento within range of (and often seeing the ominous smoke clouds from) wildfires, and seeing the smoky sunset over El Paso on the eleventh of November, the massive and destructive blazes in California have been on my mind.

The sunset over El Paso and UTEP (near the center) on the evening of November 11^th was a beautiful side effect of a horrible event: it was caused by smoke, injected high into the atmosphere by wildfires in Southern California and carried more than 1000 kilometers downwind to the Borderland. Photo from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Ranger Peak Webcam.

Persons in California and other vulnerable states may now need to prepare for brownouts- the electricity being turned off deliberately by the power company during dry, windy weather conditions- as a preventative measure to avoid wildfire disasters of the kind that have been seen there this year. The evidence is accumulating that electrical line sparks or other infrastructure malfunctions may have started the killer Camp fire that destroyed the town of Paradise north of Sacramento, as well as several of the huge and tragic fires in California’s Wine Country last year. San Diego's electrical utility has already been shutting down power in some areas when extreme fire danger conditions exist for the past several years, and the two top electrical providers in California (Pacific Gas & Electric aka PG&E, and Southern California Edison) have made it an option starting this year. PG&E’s stock plunged when investors realized the company could be liable for the fire.

But when PG&E actually preventatively shut down power for the first time in early November shortly before the Camp fire broke out, news and social media reports indicate there was a strong pushback from people who had their power cut far away from where the actual wind and danger was, in areas with light winds and without the dry brush, apparently because of the way the grid is put together and the inability to deliberately shut off small enough sections of it. Businesses with perishable products that could spoil, as well as persons with health conditions that required powered ventilators, monitors or other life-saving devices, understandably complained when their power was cut. It is reminiscent of the criticism that the National Weather Service received when they could only issue severe weather warnings for entire counties or large areas, including areas that were not threatened by the adverse conditions- and the flak weather forecasters in El Paso have received, for example, when they predicted an ice storm that didn't materialize. A recent article in the San Jose Mercury News ⁽¹⁾ hints that this pushback from when PG&E did shut off the power as a precaution, may have dissuaded them from doing that exact thing again- exactly where and when the Camp fire apocalypse got started. Will there be a race to find the technologies to better shut down vulnerable areas of the grid while leaving others powered up?

And could shutting down electrical transmission or distribution lines actually impede fire prevention and response? As a colleague pointed out to me, a brownout could have the effect of stopping the communication of vital warnings of wildfire hazard or updates on the spread of an actual fire to residents in the (potential) path of the flames, and cut power to first responders, shelter and evacuation facilities, medical centers, and other portions of the infrastructure critical to disaster preparation and response.

It's not just the electrical grid that residents of blaze-prone areas have to worry about during fire season. Having lived much of my life in California wildfire country, even something as seemingly minor as a fenderbender accident or car or motorcycle having a flat tire on a rural road, or someone pulling over to the side of the road to text or take a drowsy-driver nap, or a passing train, could and has sparked huge wildfires, including some in the last year or two. A century ago, the deadliest fire in USA history (which the Camp fire has been compared to) was caused by sparks emitted from a locomotive travelling through a parched forest in Minnesota. Californians are already accustomed to bans on campfires, etc. under vulnerable conditions. Will highways crossing dry grasslands be shut down next? And don't forget the fires caused by chainsaws,by gunshots and other use of firearms (a man set off a 47,000 acre wildfire in Arizona with a baby-gender-reveal shooting/explosive stunt this summer!)

At the same time, power and energy companies in California (especially) and elsewhere are speeding up their hiring of scientists, disaster-resiliency experts, and infrastructure engineers to help plan for and advise on these issues.

Poor forest management practices, climate change, spread of invasive species, and other environmental issues clearly all play a role in the growing wildfire hazard in the West. But in my opinion, the single biggest challenge is posed by the explosive growth of something called the “WUI”- the Wildland-Urban Interface. Simply stated, more and more persons want to live in or at the edge of the woods, and are willing to pay a premium price for land and development in such areas. This raises the risk, much in the same way that others are willing to pay the premium to live on or next to the beach- even if that increases their exposure to hurricanes and tsunamis. Fire safety officials' biggest nightmares include defending WUI neighbourhoods from wildfires, and there are no easy defences for such zones. Regulations state that brush must be cleared and trees cut down within a certain distance of dwellings and structures in the WUI, but they are often ignored, and even if the requirements are followed, recent fire history shows they often do not prevent entire towns from being engulfed in flames. As a fellow scientist now working for an electric utility reminds me, trees and branches falling into power lines have caused many recent wildfires, and that’s why they are always trying to maintain the areas around the lines- but people don’t want their trees trimmed. “It’s no win,” she said. Another scientist working in land management pointed out to me that the fire risk to WUI zones can be reduced by practicing controlled burns, but doing so in an inhabited area rightly risks complaints from residents and regulators that the resulting smoke is unsightly, unhealthy (especially for those with respiratory conditions), and may constitute a violation of clean-air standards.

Even areas that have been burned and managed are still at risk: I’ve seen reports that much of the area just burned in and around Paradise had experienced a brush-clearing fire less than a decade ago and then had been salvage-logged, as is the best practice for land management of such situations. But the blaze spread rapidly through land covered by parched grasses, aided by strong winds, throwing embers far in front of the burning grass into Paradise, blazing across the ground and low-lying flammables (including homes, businesses, and cars)- while leaving many of the town’s tall, old pine trees alive and standing, as natural fires do there in the Sierra Nevada’s Ponderosa pine ecosystem. It’s impossible to stop the wind, or grass from growing.

And then, after the fire, sooner or later, will come the rain- raising the spectre of the subsequent disaster, fire-assisted floods, as pointed out in a recent article in the Sacramento Bee⁽²⁾ : not only do wildfires remove ground cover which allows infiltration of water into the soil and reduces runoff, but they can “bake” the surface of the land, making it a hydrophobic barrier to flowing water, causing flash floods, often laden with debris and ash, when fire-scarred areas receive precipitation. Those who may have been spared from the fire, and many who live far downslope or downstream from burned zones, are put at great risk from the following floods.

Here in El Paso, the Chihuahuan Desert landscape puts most of our neighbourhoods at very low risk of wildfire damage. But other areas of Texas, including communities in the grasslands of the Panhandle around Amarillo, in wooded areas near Austin and the Hill Country, and elsewhere, are clearly vulnerable. And many places in nearby New Mexico, especially favoured getaway sites for El Pasoans such as those around Ruidoso and Silver City, are textbook examples of wildland-urban interface fire risk. Will there be enough lessons learned from the recent fires in California to reduce the hazard there, here in our backyard, and elsewhere?

(1) San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 17, 2018: “Why didn’t PG&E shut down power in advance of the Camp fire? Here’s the data.” https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/17/why-didnt-pge-shut-down-power-in-advance-of-deadly-camp-fire-heres-the-data/

(2) Sacramento Bee, October 25: “‘Fire-floods’ are the new threat in California disasters. Where will they strike next?” https://www.sacbee.com/%E2%80%A6/c%E2%80%A6/big-valley/article219881260.html

Monday, December 24, 2018

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM TOM GILL PREDICTS

Thursday, December 6, 2018

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

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