The 2009
station fire that occurred in Los Angeles from the 29th
August till the 2nd of September was one of the largest
and deadliest fires to occur in California for many years. The Los
Times reported that 'The fire
churned through more than 42,500 acres of forest, from the edge of
metropolitan Los Angeles up to pine-clad ridges and down toward the
Mojave desert.' and that More than '12,500 homes were threatened' (Los
Angeles Times, 2009). The fire itself was difficult to contain
according to the United States Department of Agriculture (2009), due
to the rugged terrain and accessibility. On this basis, I decided to
create a map that provided a management strategy for containing the
fire through the use of road and airports, and prioritising certain
areas based on the population density.
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| Thematic Map 1 |
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| Thematic Map 2 |
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| Thematic Map 3 |
Thematic map uses
As
aforementioned, the objective of my map was to develop a management
strategy for containing the fire. Upon researching the fire control
units available to the Los Angeles Fire Department, I noticed that
they use helicopters for both mapping the fire and fire containment through dumping water (Inciweb, 2009).
I plotted LA air fields and large bodies of water to identify which
airport was the best to launch a fire containment strategy. The
helicopters available to the LAFD have a range of over 400 Miles
(LAFD, 2012) which I factored in when choosing the airport. From the
map its clear that the airport (highlighted by the purple ring) in Thematic map 3 is the
best for launching the helicopters due to the location to the station
fire/s, as well as the nearby body of water.
Secondly, I plotted major highways and hospitals, again helping decide which roads to take when on the ground to the nearest health point. Lastly, I added population density, indicated by the small grey dots. Its clear that on the south side of the fire, there is dense population so preventing it from developing towards the south was essential.
The Pros
and Cons of the thematic map
The map
offers a huge amount of visual analysis, finding the best airport
to use in terms of its location to the station fire and to a body of
water is easy to see. Furthermore, you can see the road
network, which is layered on top of the station fire allowing for the shortest route to be viewed. Finally, you
can identify the hospitals easily – the red spots. If I were to
complete the Lab again, I would like to add buffer zones to each
airport as well as live traffic information to the road network.
Finally, I would like to make the map interactive, allowing for labels to be added such as what the airports name is, how large the body of water is, and the information to appear on the fire points.
Conclusion
The station fire eventually went out on 2nd September 2009. It engulfed 160,577 acres of land but was 100% contained (CA.gov, 2012) thanks to the efforts of both ground and air fire control units. These fires happen every year in California due to its climate being very dry - particularly in the summer and mapping in this way will help plan, manage and prevent fires in the future.
Reference:
Reference:
CA.gov. "Station Fire General Information." N.p., 2010. Web. 13 Dec 2012. [http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=377].
Inciweb. "InciWeb the Incident Information System: Station Fire." N.p., 2012. Web. 13 Dec 2012. [http://inciweb.org/incident/1856/].
LAFD. "Los Angeles County Fire Department." N.p., 2012. Web. 13 Dec 2012. [http://www.fire.lacounty.gov/airwildland/AirWildlandAirOps.asp].
Los Angeles Times. "Station fire claims 18 homes and two firefighters." N.p., 2009. Web. 11 Dec 2012. [http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/31/local/me-fire31].
United States Department of Agriculture. "Station Fire Initial Attack Review." N.p., 2012. Web. 14 Dec 2012. [http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/station_fire_report.pdf].
