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