Resources Deployment Criteria for a Wildland Fire

By Thembi Borras

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) responds to over 5,600 wildland fires each year. CDF is responsible for protecting over 31 million acres of California’s privately owned wildlands. The heart of CDF’s emergency response capability is a force of nearly 4,000 full-time fire professionals, foresters, and administrative employees; 1,400 seasonal firefighters; 5,600 local government volunteer firefighters; 2,600 volunteers in fire prevention; and 4,300 inmates and wards that currently comprise 196 fire crews. CDF operates a number of facilities including 806 fire stations. CDF staffs 13 air attack bases and nine helitack bases. Further CDF operates over 1,095 fire engines; 215 rescue squads; 63 paramedic units; 12 hazmat units; 38 aerial ladder trucks; 58 bulldozers; 5 mobile communication centers; and 11 mobile kitchen units. From the air CDF operates 23 1,200-gallon airtankers, 11 Super Huey helicopters, and 13 airtactical planes. This represents only a portion of the resources available in the multiagency effort to fight fire in California each year.

Given fire fighting entities know little more than whether it is going to be a good fire year or a bad fire year at the beginning of the season, have you ever wondered how this body of resources is deployed once a fire has been detected? Deployment of resources is a function of fire danger, weather, access, terrain, protecting lives, firefighter availability, fire suppression standards, fuel loading, protecting structures, support personnel availability, wildland-urban interface, publicity and notoriety, recreational and esthetic values and equipment availability. One important criteria which influences deployment of resources is fire danger.

Fire danger is expressed as a rating that integrates the effects of existing and potential fire danger factors into a series of numeric “components” and “index’s”, including ignition component, spread component, energy release component and burning index that indicate fire spread and intensity. A fire danger rating assists the fire manager in being able to determine the potential, over large geographical areas, for fires to ignite, spread, and require suppression action.

Imagine you had 100 matches and you individually lit each one and flipped it into a pile of pine needles, if 75 actually started a fire, the value of the ignition component, expressed as a percentage, would be 75%.

The spread component is the forward rate of spread expressed in feet per minute. A spread component of 25 means that the forward rate of spread is 25 feet/per minute.

The energy release component is related to the available energy, measured in Btu/ square foot within the flaming front at the head of a fire. The available energy is directly related to the amount of fuel, type of fuel and fuel moisture content.

The burning index is related to how hard the fire is to contain. The burning index value is flame length X 10.

A portion of this production was gleaned from the fact sheets on the CDF website at www.fire.ca.gov, The United States Forest Service publication entitled Policy Implications of Large Fire Management available at www.fs.fed.us/fire/management/Large_Fire_Mgt.pdf and the Fire Danger Rating System described on the website www.sierrafront.net/indexcomponents.htm.