Travelling to LA, friends in San Diego and reading about unusual weather events associated with global climate change have me alert to this fire phenomenon in California. For the moment the fires are hitting upscale areas where insurance coverage is high. These fires are however very close to Los Angeles and other neighbouring counties were bounty is not well distributed and the population density is very high. A friend in San Diego noted that the schools are closed and the air quality is just terrible at the moment.
Interesting statistics on Emergency Preparedness and Readiness
Finally a map! The Globe and CBC coverage do not include maps with their stories and I was having difficulty mentally orienting the fire locations and the places I knew. Seeing the map I realized just how many fires there are, their distribution, their locations, their size and their proximity to LA. The magnitude is far greater than I had imagined from the texts I was reading. The multimedia pictures, video, satellite images and slide shows were sorely missing scale and orientation information.
The location legend on the map is clickable, and provides details on the size of the fire, its degree of containment and when it is expected it will be fully contained. This scale is useful for the deployment of resources but far more detailed maps would be required for logistics management and local information, these would include: location of water mains; pools; fire hydrants; evacuation routes; land cover; wind directions; shelter locations; communication infrastructure; food stores; where people are moving and their degree of vulnerability and so on. These maps would have to be updated in real time from the field directly to logistics headquarters.
NASA has been distributing excellent satellite images of the fires. The following image from NASA/MODIS Rapid Response on the afternoon of October 22, it shows the thick, billowing smoke coming off the numerous large fires and spreading over the Pacific Ocean. Fire activity is outlined in red.
This Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA QuikScat satellite image was obtained at about 7 a.m. October 22 and depicts the wind speed (colors) and direction (white arrows) of the strong winds blowing offshore from Southern and Baja California. Higher wind speeds are depicted in green. QuikScat, measures ocean surface wind/stress by sending radar pulses to the surface and measuring the strength of the signals returned.
The LA Times had some satellite image composites of the Fires. These are interesting as we get to see a bit more of the topography. These were produced by the US Forest Service and GoogleMaps.
Google in collaboration with the LATimes produced some interactive information maps as part of the paper’s their full coverage.
Some simple flash maps were also created to track the spread of the fires.
Historical maps of fires in this area show how humans like to settle in dangerous places.
Jim Forbes is fire blogging from the his emergency shelter (he is not getting free wireless though!) and there is a room in his emergency evacuation shelter that has a computer room set up. He is describing the technology that he and others are relying on to communicate: notebook which has integrated 802.11 WiFi and broadband wireless; Belkin wireless SKype phone and ham radio hand held transceiver. Amazing how the Credit card system is alive and well to pay the daily wireless rates and how the wireless providers are not just making the network free in times of emergency. He is also sending out reports and being interviewed in real time.
the emergency two and six meter networks in Southern California were up and running almost as soon as th first wild lands fire fighting rigs were rolling on responses. Listening to the traffic on my tiny hand held transceiver I was amazed at the coordination and help ham radio operators provided in this fire season. It’s a long tradition I’m glad to see continuing into the 21st Century.
Jim’s other really interesting observations are about how people are not mobilizing the power of the operating communication infrastructure. For instances the computer rooms at the shelters were occupied by kids playing games and not one computer was dedicated to reporting news, fire proximity, escape routes and updates. Also, AM radio has forgotten its mandate to communicate essential news and relay useful granular information to citizens in times of need. Seems like the radio hosts were not keeping the public informed on routes to take, shelter locations and instead were providing shallow observations. Interesting how entertainment anaesthetized and impedes the raison d’être of the communication infrastructure. In addition, people are straining the cell phone infrastructure by not restricting communication to the bare minimum and are not using text messaging which is less strenuous on the networks. Clearly people need to know more how their small actions affect the big picture and how they are intimately affecting the infrastructure as a whole. The infrastructure is so invisible that people just assume that all will just continue to work!
