Applied Science
Aaron Gelobter, found those outputs useful to a point, but found the probability contours insufficient for constructing a long-term plan. He needed to have a relatively good idea of when the fire would reach certain locations on the landscape — trigger or decision points for management actions. As designed, the models only presented the probability that the fire would reach that point within a 14 day period. It did not provide any information on whether it was more likely to arrive at that point on day 1 or day 14.
Dr. Mark Finney, the developer of FSPro, worked with the Incident Management Team to produce model outputs tailored to their needs and concerns.
Finney took Gelobter's insight, and fine tuned the model outputs. Most of the information the IC requested was generated in the process of producing an FSPro map, but it was ‘thrown away’ in the overall task of producing the probabilities. Each run of a weather scenario produced projections of intensity and fire perimeter, but those were combined for the final output. Finney wrote programming code "functions" to capture those intermediate outputs and then created a map showing projected arrival times for the fire at certain trigger points. He was able to come back to the IC with new FSPro Time and Space modeling 24 hours after the request.
After consulting over the new maps, the NIMO team decided to use the information to formulate the long-term plan for the fire — setting up contingency actions and decision points ahead of the fire advance.
"The WFDSS tools gave us confidence that we were not behind the power curve," says Gelobter. "It showed us that there was a 25% probability the fire would reach our primary line at Buckhorn Road in four days. That told me that the line at Buckhorn was not a primary, and needed to be changed to an alternate line. Many of our operations folks were saying the same thing, so when the modeling tools started matching local knowledge, it gave us more confidence in our decisions."
Using updated long-term projections from the FSPro runs, the NIMO team was able to develop a strategic plan, establishing primary and contingency control lines out ahead of the fire, and creating an adaptable plan for resource needs beyond immediate tactical operations. The planning allowed the team to preposition resources ahead of the fire as well.
For most of July, the fire had moved to the south, but in early August a flank of the fire crossed the Sisquoc River, a wild and scenic river that is the major drainage in the San Rafael Wilderness. This was a major turning point in the management of the fire as it entered new terrain and a new dense fuels environment. The fire then moved to the north and northeast as well, threatening to run all the way up to the Sierra Madre ridge. This meant two main fronts developed on the fire — one moving to the south into what became known as the Live Oak Zone and the other to the north and northeast into what was termed the Richardson Zone.
The FSPro projections showed this potential development in July, and the management team knew it would be difficult to keep the fire on the southern side of the Sisquoc. The long-term plan designated the crossing of the Sisquoc as a trigger point for a major shift in strategy once this occurred. Since the fire was growing in size and moving away from the initial base camp, it was logistically becoming difficult to manage the north side of the fire. The plan called for a transfer of command to an Area Command Team and two Type 1 National IMT teams — one in the Live Oak Zone and one in the Richardson Zone.
When the fire crossed the Sisquoc, the IMT teams were already in place, and both had been thoroughly prepped on the long-term strategy and the control points laid out ahead of the fire.
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