Final Lab.

The Station Fire of 2009 started in the Angeles National Forest near the U.S Forest Ranger Station off of Highway 2. The fire directly affected areas of the North East area of the city of Los Angeles, and areas in the cities of Glendale, La Crescenta-Montrose, La Canada Flintridge, Pasadena and Altadena.
The map displays three stages of the fire between August 29, 2009, and September 2nd, 2009. The fire, however, began to be fought by the fire department since August 26, 2009, and was reported to have been fully contained not until October 16th, 2009. By the time the fire had been fully contained, it burned 160,000 acres, killed two firefighters, and destroyed 96 residences and commercial properties.
The map shows how rapidly the fire extended north into the Angeles forest.

     The map above shows the distance relationships to the fire from nearby water bodies. The success of the containment of the fire had been accomplished largely thanks to the aid of aerial combat strategies. The involvement in particular of S-64 Helitankers which dipped into the nearby lakes and reservoirs to drop water on the fire was of extreme importance.

     Hansen Lake was the closest to the center of the fire in it's beginning stages, being 10.5 miles away, but was only 3 to 5 miles away when the fire had expanded to the North East in the middle and last stages shown on this map. The Cogswell Reservoir was the second nearest, being about 11.5 miles away from the fire first began, but by the time it had expanded to its furthest East, it was only around 2.5 miles from this water body. Bigger water bodies such as the Flood control basin were considerably farther at 20 miles from the epicenter of the midle stage of the fire. The presence of these nearby water sources was of great value to the aerial strategy of the S-69 Helitankers.

     According to the report from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Helitankers had by far the biggest involvement from the other tankers which sprayed gels and other fire retardants. The Helitankers flew an average of 6.18 hours per day during their fire suppression involvement, and released an average of around 1600 gallons of water per day collected from the near water bodies.

Thanks to the effectiveness of fire combat through aerial strategies such as the use of Helitankers, the LA County Fire Department emphatically asked that the ban for helicopters flying at night for combating fires be lifted. The ban was lifted last Fall.

Recently in 2012, more Helitankers and superscoopers have been incorporated to the equipment of LA County's Fire Department. The new aircrafts are capable of scooping larger volumes of water (up to 2500 gallons) in only seconds, and are reported to be ready for the next fire season.



Sources:

Tripp, John B., Chief Deputy, Emergency Operations, Los Angeles County Fire Department, Executive Review of Actions,
Los Angeles, CA: Report of November 17, 2009
url: http://statter911.com/files/2009/11/CA-Los-Angeles-County-Station-Fire-Report.pdf

InciWeb, Incident Information system, Station Fire, Incident update of 11/10/2009
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/

California Emergency Management Agency, 2009 Los Angeles County Wildfires, After Action Corrective Action Report, Executive Summary
pdf download through:
url: calema.ca.gov

Timothy Rutt, County takes SuperScoopers, helitankers for fire season.
Friday, August 31, 2012, Altadena Online
url: http://www.altadenablog.com/2012/08/county-takes-superscoopers-helitankers-for-fire-season.html

Paul Pringle, article: Forest Service ends ban on night flights to battle fires, Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2012

Lab 7

Source: US Census 2000 Beurau. Counties with a Black alone population Greater Than Zero, Ranked by Percent

We can note in this map the considerably larger concentration of black populations in the United States in the Southern and South Eastern part of the United States. We can also notice empty pockets containing counties with no black population in the upper middle of the united States.

In this map, as expected, we notice the Asian population congregating more in counties throughout the coast of California. Surprisingly to me, I have also noticed a heavy concentration of this group in northern Washington and the upper east part of Texas.

This maps shows a very marked difference in where other races choose to live in the United States by denoting a stronger preference by other races to congregate to the west of almost the very middle of the United States. The larger groups of this category, surprisingly, settle not just in California, but in several other parts of the South Western States. It would be interesting to dig deeper into how the US census came up with the various classifications for races and what prompted their criteria.

The creation of these census map series gave me a glimpse of the possibilities for map creation derived from data collection. It seems it may be possible to create maps from the census data tables that can reflect many different types of statistical data. Putting maps together from reliable sources of data could be fun and enlightening. 
Although I still find the ArcGIS software difficult to use and not very intuitive, I am very impressed with its capabilities. I've begun to understand the process and complexities involved in creating a map from structured research, and how to convert statistical data tables to a visual format, such as a map, that anyone can easily appreciate. I look forward to seeing the development of this software, perhaps in the near future to be produced also for the Mac operating systems which are usually more user friendly.
As far as GIS, in general, I find it a fascinating science. Geography had always interested me out of a curiosity since childhood for where and how people far away in other cultures lived. This course has given me a clearer idea as to how I had thus far come to interpret maps that reflect that data that had always interested me. It has also shown me the various steps involved in making a responsibly produced map and how is the product of a very structured process where from data collection to cartographic representation, the steps are to be very methodical.