The Lab work for the final week is to analyze some aspects of the August – September 2009 Station Fire in Los Angeles County. More specifically my study centralizes on the health impacts on the LAUSD school children and hospital patients in LA county area.
Just to imagine to severity and the centrality of the fire you can refer to any of the figures. Those areas that share boundaries with wild land will be at increased risk for fire as the water consumption in those areas grows and the drought seasons continue to be more and more frequent.
To give some information about the severity and the magnitude of the fire, I’ll just mention some of the damages it caused it LA county. As was mentioned in LA Times (August 31, 2009), the fire doubled in size overnight to consume 85,000 acres and more structures. 18 houses lost to fire earlier in the Tujunga Canyon area; however officials expected this number to rise. Many neighborhoods were mandatory evacuated overnight as the fire continued to furiously spread in 3 directions. But the fire did not burn the top of the Mt. Wilson, where many crucial communication centers are located. “We are making progress. But it is very slow and very dangerous," incident commander Mike Dietrich of the U.S. Forest Service said at a news conference this morning. "We have to wait for the fire to come to us" (LA Times, August 31, 2009). “This fire is probably a week away from being fully contained,” Mr. Quintelier said. “It’s just a long marathon sort of job that lies ahead.” By the time the fire was evacuated more than 161,000 acres was burnt and 2 firefighters were lost to fire. 2,800 fire personnel from around the state were brought to battle the Station fire, also 12 helicopters and 8 air tankers were in action too.
There are 2 theme maps in my report; one about schools and the other one about hospitals. Just to demonstrate couple of aspects of impact on the LA County population, I did a 1 mile buffer analysis on LA County schools and a 5 mile buffer analysis on LA County hospitals. Thanks God no schools or hospitals were burnt, but many of them were just at the edge of the fire and were under a real risk. Because the fire was mostly in an uphill area, the nearby schools and hospitals were covered under debris. However the biggest danger was the debris in the air, which might have had some toxic components in it.
This simple analysis demonstrates how the zone analysis of residential areas is not thought trough. Planning should be done taking into account the fact that there are serious limitations to the effectiveness of policy - making. Financial means are restricted, if not limited. One other obstacle is that “there is very little undeveloped land to which zoning restrictions [can] be applied.” (Gardner, et al. 170) |
| 1 mile Buffer Analysis on schools of LA County |
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| 5 mile Buffer Analysis on hospitals of LA County I also did aspect and slop maps of LA County which also show the area that the fire spread. It is done in different colors showing the area that was consumed by fire each day. It is easily visible in the maps that the fire area almost doubled every day. The maps show that the fire mostly spread uphill into the more forested area. |
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| An Aspect Map with LA County Station Fire Perimeters |
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| A Slop Map with LA County Station Fire Perimeters |
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| A Hillshade Map with LA County Station Fire Perimeters |
To sum up my report I’ll mention more alarming information from the surveys. Communities that had been impacted by a fire were “more likely to assign lower probability of occurrence” than communities that had not been impacted. Basically, the findings “suggest a risk-dampening effect” where homeowners convince themselves that it will be ‘highly improbable’ for them to be hit by another fire again (Cortner, et al. 59). However, this serious miscalculation does not take into consideration the “reoccurring nature of the fires, especially in southern California (Cortner, et al. 59). This mentality has to change completely for the population to be better protected from fires and other natural disasters.
References
Bruce Quintelier (Fire information officer for the United States Forest Service). http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/us/31fires.html?scp=1&sq=la%20county%20fire&st=cse
Cortner, Hanna J., Philip D. Gardner, and Jonathan G. Taylor. “Fire Hazards at the Urban-Wildland Interface: What the Public Expects .” Environmental Management . 12.1 57-62
Gardner, Philip D., Hanna J. Cortner, and Keith Widaman. “The Risk Perceptions and Policy Response toward Wildland Fire Hazards by Urban Home - Owners.” Landscape and Urban Planning. 14. (1987): 163-172
Mike Dietrich (U.S. Forest Service incident commander). http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/la-county-fire-doubles-in-size-more-homes-list-mt-wilson-threatened.html
Paul Pringle. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/la-county-fire-doubles-in-size-more-homes-list-mt-wilson-threatened.html
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