As we know, wildfires can strike at any moment throughout the year given the right conditions. It is critical to have a game plan before and while a wildfire impacts your community. Due to the ongoing pandemic, additional considerations are needed to ensure a complete game plan. Following local and health professional guidelines while understanding wildfire and COVID-19 in your community are great ways to prepare.
With an unprecedented fire season, more people have seen or experienced the detrimental effects of wildfires. Smoke damage is frequently an overlooked consequence from these fires. Not only can smoke be damaging to homes, but it can also be harmful to wildlife and to one’s health. In August and September, extreme wildfire activity throughout the western states created an abundance of smoke that spread across the continental U.S. Unfortunately, the widespread smoke caused an increase in hazardous air quality across the country. RedZone decided to take a closer look at the effects of smoke on health and on local wildlife and pets. Read more
Ellwood Oil Fields Where Japanese Submarines Attacked in 1942
During World War II, Japanese submarines off of the Santa Barbara Coast fired shells making an oil field explode near the Los Padres National Forest. This created a fear in Americans. People were concerned that wildfire could be used as a war tactic in the forests off of the Pacific Coast. The Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention (CFFP) program was created to bring light to wildfire prevention by reducing the number of human caused fires. Eventually, this program led to the creation of Smokey Bear as an influential wildfire prevention icon. Smokey is now recognized by 96% of adults – a recognition rate that is comparable to that of the President and Mickey Mouse!
This week, RedZone Software is in attendance at the Cat Risk Management Conference in Orlando, FL. The conference is hosted every year by the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA). The event brings leading global experts together to meet and discuss catastrophe risk management. Representatives from all across the industry were present, including: reinsurers, modeling companies, researchers, regulators, and academics. As the conference subtitle for 2020 indicates, attendees are experiencing “Forward Looking Catastrophe Risk Management”! This is RedZone’s 3rd year in attendance featuring the RZRisk and RZExposure solutions we offer.
The Mississippi River entered flood stage on February 17, 2019 and remained in flood stage in New Orleans for a record 292 days. In an average year, the river runs around three to five feet deep through New Orleans heading into Hurricane Season. This week, the river just dropped under eleven feet deep. A large hurricane, like Katrina, can add twelve feet to the river depth, which would push well beyond the levee height and cause widespread flooding. Read more
June 2019 marked the 20th year anniversary for Operation Santa Ana. Doug Lannon, a retired Cal Fire Assistant Chief from the San Bernardino Unit and current Senior Wildfire Liaison for RedZone, served as the keynote speaker to kick off the training event for this year’s inspection assignments at the Southern California Edison Inc. Training and Educational Facility.
With the duties assigned to fire agencies becoming more daunting as the population continues to grow, and climatic conditions favor worse fire behavior, the service has adopted GIS as a means to combat these ever changing factors. In this blog, I briefly touch on some of the aspect that GIS software programs have been implemented in the fire service to help mitigate some of the issues related to the disasters they face on a daily basis.
A recent PBS documentary that aired in early May 2019 details accounts of California residents that fled for their lives during the 2018 fire season. It also extensively looks into extreme wildfire behavior, exploring how forestry practices, climate change, and physics play a role in fire activity.
The 2019 wildfire season is about to start. So far this year major fires have already igniting across Texas, Oklahoma, and the Southwest. As we move into the summer months, increasingly warm and dry conditions will continue to fuel the threat of wildfires. The National Inter-agency Fire Center released their fire potential outlook for summer months, predicting an above average fire season for all of the twelve western states making wildfire intelligence gathering even more essential. This foreboding outlook comes on the heels of another (2018) Fire Season that set multiple records.