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27 October 2023
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Technology: A beast like the 2003 Cedar fire might not be as deadly today: ‘The technology we have now is fantastic’
Large networks of weather stations and live cameras have been placed throughout the county, giving firefighters rapid access to data they need for fight wildfires. In San Diego County’s backcountry, few things are more unwelcome than strong Santa Ana winds that arrive when temperatures are high, the humidity is low and the landscape is parched. It’s the makings of a wildfire, the kind that started on 25 October 2003, when the Santa Anas caught a lost hunter’s lit match and turned swaths of the Cleveland National Forest into a hellscape. The Cedar fire, as it’s known, ultimately killed 15 people, destroyed more than 2 200 homes and burned 273 246 acres with flames that rose as high as 100 feet. For years, it remained California’s largest wildfire.
Two decades later, firestorms are still a worry. Much of the county remains carpeted with highly flammable chaparral. The Santa Ana wind season is longer. And seasonal temperatures are trending upward. Few places in the US have a higher wildfire risk, federal emergency management officials say.
Only now, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the future will bring far less death and destruction.
Big leaps in science and technology have dramatically improved weather forecasting, which used to involve a lot of guesswork and made waging war against wildfires faster, safer and more effective.
With reasonable precision, the National Weather Service can now give two to three days’ notice of when and where Santa Ana winds will hit and how strong they’ll be in different places.
They are benefiting, in part, from San Diego Gas & Electric’s decision more than a decade ago to place a large network of weather stations in its service area, which includes all of San Diego County and part of southern Orange County. The region has repeatedly been hit by wildfires, including a 2007 fire sparked by a tree limb knocked onto an SDG&E line by high winds.
There are now 222 stations in SDG&E’s weather station network, collecting data that is made available to everyone from first responders to scientists to the general public; data that includes a fire potential index and animations that show where the wind is blowing.
SDG&E also uses the data to determine if it needs to temporarily turn off power in certain parts of the county to prevent sparks from its power lines from starting wildfires. Consumers can get digital notice and updates about possible or pending shutoffs.
The data flow increased in 2018, when UC San Diego started rapidly expanding the network of live automated cameras and sensors it had been placing in fire-prone areas of San Diego County and the rest of California.
That network, known as ALERTCalifornia, today features more than 1 050 cameras statewide, including 52 in San Diego County. First responders can use cell phone and iPad apps to access both networks.
And UCSD’s cameras also can do some of their own snooping. The university has been using AI algorithms to examine the camera feeds, looking for emerging fires, which can be tricky, because clouds and fog can be mistaken for smoke. In some cases, the method can be more effective than simply relying on humans. Algorithms, after all, don’t get tired. Humans do.
The AI system quickly notifies first responders when it identifies a potential trouble spot. Last summer, in a span of less than two months, the system identified nearly 80 fires before people reported them to 9-1-1, according to the Los Angeles Times. Some of the fires were located in San Diego County.
Data from these two networks and other platforms, including drones, fixed-wing aircraft and satellites, are combined in computer models that rapidly predict where a new wildfire might spread next, how fast it will move and how difficult it will be to suppress.
This enables firefighters to mount an appropriate response and to customize and post evacuation notices on a medium that largely did not exist in 2003, social media.
“If we had a wildfire today that covered the same footprint as the Cedar fire, I think there would be fewer fatalities and fewer structures destroyed,” said Tony Mecham, chief of Cal Fire/San Diego County Fire Department. “The new technology is fantastic.”
A comment like that would have been wildly out of place in 2003. There were fewer than 20 official, automated weather stations in the San Diego County mountains. And they fed the National Weather Service fresh data only once an hour.
“That meant that the resolution of our computer models could not pick up towns like Ramona and Julian,” said Alex Tardy, a weather service forecaster. “How do you project the future if you can’t show where it’s going to be windy?”
That was a life-and-death matter during the Cedar fire. The fire began in thick chaparral near the east end of San Diego Country Estates. Night was falling. Access was tough. Winds were shifting but no one knew precisely where or by how much. The forecast was too generic.
Cal Fire decided not to immediately send in large numbers of firefighters. “We didn’t know if they would have a safe space to work in,” Mecham said.
These safety concerns, the growing incidence of wildfires and the damage they posed to its power system led SDG&E to create its network of weather stations, most of them in remote passes and canyons that were oriented east-west and northeast-southwest.
It had been believed that those were the places where the Santa Anas ran wild, an incomplete assumption by many forecasters and firefighters. Research later established that Santa Anas also can travel from north to south along parts of Interstate 8 in eastern San Diego County with explosive power that sometimes topples high-profile vehicles. Those winds also can spark major fires.
There was “something else going on that wasn’t captured in the science textbooks,” said Brian D’Agostino, vice president of wildfire and climate science at SDG&E.
As the utility’s weather network expanded, the data it yielded also revealed that Santa Anas can easily reach 70mph to 80mph in places like Sill Hill southwest of Julian and Hellhole Canyon east of Valley Center. Some gusts have been clocked at 100mph, refuting a longstanding belief among many forecasters and firefighters that the Santa Anas generally did not blow much beyond 50mph.
These discoveries showed that first responders needed a better understanding of how the topography of specific areas affects the speed and direction of winds.
Mecham likes how things have evolved since then. “The fire modelling software is consistent and helps us make better decisions,” he said.
But it doesn’t mean that damaging fires won’t arise in the future. “Mother Nature always wins,” Mecham said. “When she puts 100mph winds on the ground, they’re going to burn as long as the wind blows.”
Source: The San Diego Union Tribune
Two decades later, firestorms are still a worry. Much of the county remains carpeted with highly flammable chaparral. The Santa Ana wind season is longer. And seasonal temperatures are trending upward. Few places in the US have a higher wildfire risk, federal emergency management officials say.
Only now, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the future will bring far less death and destruction.
Big leaps in science and technology have dramatically improved weather forecasting, which used to involve a lot of guesswork and made waging war against wildfires faster, safer and more effective.
With reasonable precision, the National Weather Service can now give two to three days’ notice of when and where Santa Ana winds will hit and how strong they’ll be in different places.
They are benefiting, in part, from San Diego Gas & Electric’s decision more than a decade ago to place a large network of weather stations in its service area, which includes all of San Diego County and part of southern Orange County. The region has repeatedly been hit by wildfires, including a 2007 fire sparked by a tree limb knocked onto an SDG&E line by high winds.
There are now 222 stations in SDG&E’s weather station network, collecting data that is made available to everyone from first responders to scientists to the general public; data that includes a fire potential index and animations that show where the wind is blowing.
SDG&E also uses the data to determine if it needs to temporarily turn off power in certain parts of the county to prevent sparks from its power lines from starting wildfires. Consumers can get digital notice and updates about possible or pending shutoffs.
The data flow increased in 2018, when UC San Diego started rapidly expanding the network of live automated cameras and sensors it had been placing in fire-prone areas of San Diego County and the rest of California.
That network, known as ALERTCalifornia, today features more than 1 050 cameras statewide, including 52 in San Diego County. First responders can use cell phone and iPad apps to access both networks.
And UCSD’s cameras also can do some of their own snooping. The university has been using AI algorithms to examine the camera feeds, looking for emerging fires, which can be tricky, because clouds and fog can be mistaken for smoke. In some cases, the method can be more effective than simply relying on humans. Algorithms, after all, don’t get tired. Humans do.
The AI system quickly notifies first responders when it identifies a potential trouble spot. Last summer, in a span of less than two months, the system identified nearly 80 fires before people reported them to 9-1-1, according to the Los Angeles Times. Some of the fires were located in San Diego County.
Data from these two networks and other platforms, including drones, fixed-wing aircraft and satellites, are combined in computer models that rapidly predict where a new wildfire might spread next, how fast it will move and how difficult it will be to suppress.
This enables firefighters to mount an appropriate response and to customize and post evacuation notices on a medium that largely did not exist in 2003, social media.
“If we had a wildfire today that covered the same footprint as the Cedar fire, I think there would be fewer fatalities and fewer structures destroyed,” said Tony Mecham, chief of Cal Fire/San Diego County Fire Department. “The new technology is fantastic.”
A comment like that would have been wildly out of place in 2003. There were fewer than 20 official, automated weather stations in the San Diego County mountains. And they fed the National Weather Service fresh data only once an hour.
“That meant that the resolution of our computer models could not pick up towns like Ramona and Julian,” said Alex Tardy, a weather service forecaster. “How do you project the future if you can’t show where it’s going to be windy?”
That was a life-and-death matter during the Cedar fire. The fire began in thick chaparral near the east end of San Diego Country Estates. Night was falling. Access was tough. Winds were shifting but no one knew precisely where or by how much. The forecast was too generic.
Cal Fire decided not to immediately send in large numbers of firefighters. “We didn’t know if they would have a safe space to work in,” Mecham said.
These safety concerns, the growing incidence of wildfires and the damage they posed to its power system led SDG&E to create its network of weather stations, most of them in remote passes and canyons that were oriented east-west and northeast-southwest.
It had been believed that those were the places where the Santa Anas ran wild, an incomplete assumption by many forecasters and firefighters. Research later established that Santa Anas also can travel from north to south along parts of Interstate 8 in eastern San Diego County with explosive power that sometimes topples high-profile vehicles. Those winds also can spark major fires.
There was “something else going on that wasn’t captured in the science textbooks,” said Brian D’Agostino, vice president of wildfire and climate science at SDG&E.
As the utility’s weather network expanded, the data it yielded also revealed that Santa Anas can easily reach 70mph to 80mph in places like Sill Hill southwest of Julian and Hellhole Canyon east of Valley Center. Some gusts have been clocked at 100mph, refuting a longstanding belief among many forecasters and firefighters that the Santa Anas generally did not blow much beyond 50mph.
These discoveries showed that first responders needed a better understanding of how the topography of specific areas affects the speed and direction of winds.
Mecham likes how things have evolved since then. “The fire modelling software is consistent and helps us make better decisions,” he said.
But it doesn’t mean that damaging fires won’t arise in the future. “Mother Nature always wins,” Mecham said. “When she puts 100mph winds on the ground, they’re going to burn as long as the wind blows.”
Source: The San Diego Union Tribune