Moderator: James Russell, Institute for Business & Home Safety
Recorder: Sarah McCaffrey, USDA Forest Service
Discussants: Thomas Cova, University of Utah; David Evans, National Instiutes of Standards and Technology; Stephan Seller, California Governor's Office of Emergency Services
This session presented perspectives and research related to the 2003 Southern California wildfires.
Tom Cova presented animated maps of the Old/Grand Prix fires and Cedar/Paradise fires showing the progression of the fires and of evacuation orders (the animation can be found at: http://www.geog.utah.edu/faculty/index.html?id=1). Cova looked at variables related to evacuation such as type of evacuation order and distance from fire when issued. Cova's research addresses the question of mandatory evacuation versus sheltering in place. No one who stayed in their house died. He expects use of shelter in place to increase, especially in areas with good defensible space and/or limited egress.
David Evans discussed local building regulations and how they often allow structures to be built as close together as two meters. This creates a type of fire that primarily spreads by house-to-house ignition; not really a wildland fire, but a "community fire." Scripps Ranch in the Cedar fire is a good example of this - all but one or two houses were completely burned, while surrounding eucalyptus trees were relatively untouched. NIST is developing a "neighborhood scale" fire spread model because the assumptions used to model wildland fire spread are insufficient for wildland/urban interface and community fire modeling. For instance, there are different time scales for trees and for houses burning - fires tend to go through a community fairly quickly but houses burn for much longer.
Steve Sellers noted that the 1991 Oakland Hills fire led to a lot of changes in areas such as emergency management, improved land use and building codes, increased citizen involvement, and political leadership. The impact of these changes played an important role in recent fires. For instance, changes in land use and building codes are one reason why fires often stopped when they hit newer subdivisions. Local issues are some of the biggest challenges now and in the future, especially in San Diego where fire management is very fragmented and citizens will not support more organized fire services. In Cedar Glen (part of the Old fire), an area with very old infrastructure, a lot of people want to rebuild in the same manner as what was there before. An after action report on emergency management highlighted the need for better integration across all phases of emergency management; improved access to information before, during, and after an event; and better post-fire hazard identification and inter-agency collaboration.
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Updated April 30, 2007