Tag Archives: fire

Maui

The Maui fires are awful. First of all, my sympathy for all the loss of life, property, and all the displacement and disruption people are experiencing. The Los Angeles Times has some coverage of factors that may have contributed to the disaster.

  • Rain shadow and seasonal dry conditions, which are normal
  • Severe drought on top of these conditions
  • Low humidity
  • High winds (gusts up to 80 mph) caused by a hurricane nearby, but not close enough to cause rainfall on the island
  • High ocean temperatures made even worse by El Nino this year

The severity and frequency of both drought and hurricanes have increased due to climate change, making this catastrophic combination of factors more likely to occur than it would have been in the past. The article also says cooler ocean temperatures in the past have tended to steer hurricanes away from Hawaii, and this is also less like to occur now than in the past. So all this is bad luck, but we humans have made our own bad luck to a certain extent.

utilities, power lines, and wild fires

Apparently the devastating wild fires in California recently may have been sparked by downed electric lines, and there is a California law that may hold the utilities responsible for those lines liable for massive damages. Their stocks are now plunging as a result. Somewhat ironically, they are arguing that the severity of the wild fires is a result of climate change, even if they were sparked by the power lines. Climate change is a “societal issue” requiring “holistic solutions”, they say. I’m thinking that the mix of fossil and renewable fuels used to generate electricity could be part of the problem.

getting out of a burning building

There’s no perfect way to get people out of a burning high rise quickly.

Fire evacuation in high-rise buildings: a review of human behaviour and modelling research

A review of literature related to fire evacuation in high-rise buildings was carried out with the following objectives, (1) to identify the key behavioural factors affecting the performance of people during a fire in a high-rise building, the singularities associated to this type of buildings and areas of future research; (2) to review the procedures and strategies currently adopted in high-rise buildings; (3) to review and analyse the capabilities of evacuation models by reviewing their current characteristics and applications in the context of high-rise building evacuations. The review included both findings on human behaviour in high-rise buildings and modelling techniques and tools. Different categories of building use were taken into account, namely office buildings, residential buildings and health care facilities. The individual or combined use of different egress components was analysed. Egress components include the use of stairs, elevators as well as alternative means of escape (e.g., sky-bridges, helicopters, etc.). The effectiveness of the egress components is strongly affected by the building use and the population involved. The review shows that evacuation models can be effectively employed to study relocation strategies and safety issues associated with high-rise buildings. The suitability of egress models for high-rise building evacuations is associated with their flexibility in representing different egress components and complex behavioural processes. The review highlights that there is not a definitive model to be used but that the predictive capabilities of evacuation modelling techniques would be enhanced if more than one model is employed to study different egress aspects. Future research and model developments should focus on the study of the impact of staff actions, group dynamics and people with disabilities. Given the increasing height of buildings and the gradual reduction in the physical abilities of the population, the effects of fatigue on evacuation need further studies.

Alaska wildfires

Climate Central has an interesting report on a trend of increasing wildfires in the Arctic region of Alaska.

In the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the country, with average temperatures up by nearly 3°F. By 2050, temperatures are projected to climb an additional 2-4 degrees, with the Arctic region seeing the most dramatic increases. These rising temperatures are expected to increase wildfire risks in Alaska, just as they have in the rest of the western U.S. Wildfires have been on the rise across the western U.S. since the 1970s, at the same time that spring and summer temperatures have increased dramatically, and average spring snowpack has declined substantially. Fires in Alaska don’t often make news in the lower 48, but they threaten vast expanses of forest, parkland, and tundra that store immense quantities of carbon. The state’s growing number of large wildfires have the potential to damage these ecosystems, and the people and wildlife that depend on them, while releasing a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere, further contributing to global warming. Wildfire emissions over these vast areas also threaten air quality in Alaska and beyond.

They attribute the trend to higher temperatures in May, June, and July, while at the same time there has been no clear trend in rainfall during these months. So it is getting hotter and, if not dryer, at least not any wetter. It makes sense that higher temperatures would dry out wood, dead vegetation, and organic soils, increasing the amount fuel available for fires. I don’t know what exactly starts the fires, maybe lightning. The scariest thing in this report is the idea of a self-reinforcing feedback loop between thawing permafrost, burning forests and organic soils, greenhouse gas emissions, and higher temperatures. I suspect if this is going on in Alaska, it is also going on in other parts of the Arctic – Canada, northern Europe, and Russia.