Despite major advances in numerical weather prediction, few resources exist to forecast wildland fire danger conditions to support operational fire management decisions and community early-warning systems.
Wildland firefighters are exposed to wood smoke, which contains hazardous air pollutants, by suppressing thousands of wildfires across the U. S. each year.
This article examines salient topics and textual silences in the media coverage of two major wildfires in Washington State. A significant body of research has examined the importance of media coverage in framing disaster events, yet gaps remain in scholarly understanding of wildfire media coverage.
The increasing frequency and intensity of wildland and wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires have become a significant concern in many parts of the United States and around the world. To address and manage this WUI fire risk, local fire departments around the country have begun to acquire the appropriate equipment and offer more training in wildfire response and suppression.
Creating a safe workplace for wildland firefighters has long been at the centre of discussion for researchers and practitioners. The goal of wildland fire safety research has been to protect operational firefighters, yet its contributions often fall short of potential because much is getting lost in the translation of peer-reviewed results to potential and intended users.
Escape routes are essential components of wildland firefighter safety, providing pre-defined pathways to a safety zone. Among the many factors that affect travel rates along an escape route, landscape conditions such as slope, low-lying vegetation density, and ground surface roughness are particularly influential, and can be measured using airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data.
Currently, limited research on large-fire suppression effectiveness suggests fire managers may over-allocate resources relative to values to be protected. Coupled with observations that weather may be more important than resource abundance to achieve control objectives, resource use may be driven more by risk aversion than efficiency.
Wildfire’s economic, ecological and social impacts are on the rise, fostering the realisation that business-as-usual fire management in the United States is not sustainable.
Each year, the general public and wildland firefighters in the US are exposed to smoke from wildland fires.
Wildfires are an inherent part of the landscape in many parts of the world; however, they often impose substantial economic burdens on human populations where they occur, both in terms of impacts and of management costs.