Case Studies :: Part II

Wildfire at the WUI

“Forests provided the major material for construction and almost the only fuel source of the classical world, and depletion of this source precipitated a number of crises. As forests retreated with land clearance, wood decreased in availability and increased in price”. Hardy and Totelin, 2016.

6.2 Overview

Having discussed how the low, mixed, and high-severity fire regimes of the western U.S. manifested in the Yellowstone National Park 1988, and the southern California 2003, and 2007 October fire complexes in Part I, Case Studies: Part II builds thereon, its foci illuminating how the fire behaviours as were inherent therein impacted upon the wildland urban interface and intermix. The purpose thereof is further informing the future wildfire trajectories upon which the speculations to follow reside.

6.2.1 Case Study #1: 1988 Yellowstone Fire Complex

“Human activities altered the pattern and extent of the fires of 1988”. Agee, 2000.

The wildfire equivalent of the Mount St. Helens eruption of eight years earlier [128], the Yellowstone National Park [YNP] 1988 fires were broadcast locally, nationally, and globally, the over-arching message thereof that, an ecological catastrophe, the fires required fighting, and at all resource costs. However, as discussed earlier, though fire suppression during the late 19th and early to mid 20th century had increased the overall fuel-load within the fire complex, the event was, nonetheless, within the historical [<1890s] intensity and severity range of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s fire regimes.

While a wildland, as one of the foremost sites of geothermal research worldwide, a major international tourism and leisure destination, and place of outstanding natural beauty, from its inauguration as a national park onwards, YNP has become populated by an array of buildings and infrastructure that serve its scientific, education, commercial, and wider interests. Spread throughout the park, its structures fall under the intermix classification, which even accounting for defensible space, renders them at high risk due to the behaviours of the park’s mixed to high severity fire regimes. Beyond the park’s extensive boundary reside several wildland urban interface communities of varying scales. Thus, when, in late June 1988 it became evident that fires of historic proportions may be about to unfold the emphasis was not merely on protecting the buildings within the park, but beyond.

Within the park, largely wooden structures, many several decades old, rendered their materiality aligned to that of the forests about them. Therein, fuel supplies aside, the threat was not ecological, and arguably, in the greater economic scheme of things, not financial, given that, compared to the fires that have since unfolded elsewhere, the property values were incremental. However, the cultural and emotional value of the buildings was great, and not least to the people that lived and worked in the park. Reading accounts of the collective effort that was made to protect the buildings [Henry, 2015] [Figs. 64 and 65], it is much evident that, regardless of the scale of the event, local knowledge of the park’s fire regimes, topography, and other landscape features, together with immense courage and commitment, reduced the structures lost to a mere sixty-seven: a feat made even more extraordinary for the fact that not merely did 793,000> acres burn in toto, but not one, but several fires were burning from the start to the finish of the firestorm.

Politically, the event is dichotomous, in that while the park’s rangers, firefighters, and residents largely recognised the role of fire in the GYE, as, given their initial rhetoric, did President Reagan’s office, misleading media coverage fuelled arguments, policy and otherwise, as to how the fires ought to be handled (Ibid). But, regardless thereof, the some 25,000 persons that were mobilised regionally and nationally, including land, sea, and air troops, succeeded in protecting the lives of all within the YNP boundary. Both within and beyond the park, fire crews and supporting personnel prevented against the fires spreading to several neighbouring WUI communities including Cooke City and Silver Gate, Montana, and largely prevented against their spread in two further communities, Sunlight Basin and Crandall Creek.

However, as both the atmospheric and political climate shift, and as building in areas adjacent to the YNP increase, the need to review policy, related building codes, and that which is built therefrom, as extends not merely to the construction, but to mining, and other resource extraction activities, remains great. If there’s a take-away from the YNP 1988 fires it’s that, though instances there are when too many are the cooks in the strategy kitchen, co-existing with fire complexes is not one: protecting lives during events of their complexity and scale requires deep and diverse expertise, skills, and knowledge, both within and beyond the scientific community, and not least when, as earlier, some researchers estimate that by 2100, annual burned area in the region in which YNP is located, could increase by 600>%.

6.2.2 Case Study #2: 2003 Southern California Fire Complex

“It was no longer ‘do what you can to protect the structures’ it was ‘do what you can to get these people out and to a place of safety’…”. Fox, 2013.

From its soils to its ecology, to its place and indigenous tribal names, California, and in particular its southern region is laden with geological, ecological, anthropological, and etymological clues that point to a fiery past. But for one species, fire would pose not a problem to the region, that species being H.sapiens, or more specifically, our present wildland urban interface architectural paradigm, which having regionally absorbed an area some 30-fold greater than in the late 1880s (Keeley et al, 2004) is at systemic odds with the regional fire regimes.

The scientific institutions of the 21st century endowed with sizeably greater real-time environmental data than they of 3-decades ago, that October 2003 would deliver one of the most intense fire seasons in decades came as no surprise, for state-wide, Remote Automated Weather [RAW] station readings read ‘extreme fire-weather’. However, when so many are the variables that impact upon the spread, intensity, and severity of wildfires, none could anticipate the moment-to-moment events as would unfold.

All, as yet identified, sources of ignition within the fire complex human-caused, including the lighting of a signal flare, and two cases of arson, the sCA October 2003 fire complex became emblematic of the dichotomy at the boundary of socio- ecological systems. As several of the region’s fire-adapted landscapes ignited into flame, species of which the reproduction is dependent thereupon propagated the fire through their various pyrotechnic endurer, evader, and resister functional traits, as simultaneously, both regional and national fire crews, comprised men and women from institutions as diverse as military troops, prisoners, and community volunteers mobilised to fight the fires.

As in London in September 1666, while a combination of people power and equipment saved some residences and businesses, 3,631 homes were destroyed, and yet more were damaged (FEMA, 2004) [Fig. 66]. However, though many were the properties lost to the 740,000 acres-wide fire complex, relatively few [22] lost their lives, the matter thereof a testament, to amongst others things, state agencies’ capacity to co-ordinate mass evacuations on barely any notice. Practice, the saying goes, ‘makes perfect’, which is pertinent because just four years later sCA would need implement a wildfire evacuation of even greater proportions.

6.2.3 Case Study #3: 2007 Southern California Fire Complex

“Firefighters had wrapped whatever photos and mementos they could salvage and left them in front of burned-out houses” Wildfire Today, 2009.

A pyric event of Pandorian proportions, though the 2007 sCA fire complex [Figs. 63, 67] ignited over 230,000 more acres than that of four years previously, lessons already learned helped more than halve the number of lives lost, and limit loss of residences to over 550 fewer (Grijalva et al, (n.d), hence considerably lowered insurance losses (Ibid). However, nothing short of a herculean effort was required, as fire and support crews in their thousands utilised both state, out-of-state and out-of- nation airtankers, helitankers, and other firefighting arsenal in a military-like battle of humanity vs. firestorm.

As occurred in the October 2003 fire complex, whether unintentional or otherwise, all known causations were anthropogenic, including ignitions sparked from power lines being blown about in the Santa Ana winds, from embers that escaped during equipment usage, an electrical fire, a structural fire, and two counts of arson, therein met with the regional WUI ignition trend of the late 20th and early 21st century. However, while human-action may have advanced the ignition date, the fuel-state and quantity was such that, as in London in 1666, and other urban, peri-urban, and wild landscapes that have been discussed throughout this thesis, fires of their scale and severity were inevitable, as fire crews, and fire-educated citizenry more widely, were largely aware.

But, typically of the ephemeral element of fire, for all the many protocols and practices that were to hand, at many sites, the complex escaped the control boundaries that fire crews attempted to apply. Having manifested in atmospheric conditions aligned to those that have emerged over and again in eons past, and that fit well within the parameters of those that theoretical and climate models suggest may imminently arrive, one of the primary ‘weapons’ of firefighting choice, that being air- borne water dispersal vehicles, were rendered ineffective where wind-speeds were especially high.

While, models suggest that the order of magnitude of increases to wildfire activity to 2100 are lower than in some other western U.S. regions, regionally, not merely is the WUI expanding with sustained rapidity, but when climate-change induced migration is accounted for, the rate thereof could multiply yet more, and within a mere few decades. Thus, though they that have lived and worked in this acutely fire-prone region tend understand the fundamental dynamics that underpin its flammability, and the risks that reside therein, many as are remote therefrom do not, which, as discussed earlier is a statement that extends to numerous architects, planners, and other built environment professionals of the research, practice, and communications kind. Not so much a clock, but a WUI firebomb ticking, imperative is the need for the community at large to grapple with the difficult, complex, and highly technical choices humanity need make if, as indigenous communities, such as Native Americans, we are to path-find a route to coexistence with fire.