Retrospective Demonstrations of an Integrated Team Approach to Fire Warnings for Western United States Wildfire Disasters

Abstract

An integrated warning team (IWT) approach to the provision of fire warnings (FRWs) for particularly dangerous wildfires has been developed and operationally demonstrated in select jurisdictions of Oklahoma and Texas. Such warnings provide initial public notification of wildfires that present an immediate threat to life and property and also influence protective actions by incident managers. This warning paradigm consists of a real-time interagency collaborative process between National Weather Service meteorologists and state forestry agency fire analysts based on shared knowledge of the fire environment and satellite-detected fire characteristics. To explore the viability of IWT FRW concepts elsewhere, analyses of decisional guidance thresholds for multiagency coordination and warning issuance timelines from operational demonstrations in Oklahoma and Texas are applied to data reviews of three western United States wildfire disasters. The retrospective test cases support possible warning issuance up to 55 minutes prior to the 8 November 2018 Camp Fire entering Paradise, California, and coincident with communitywide evacuations during the 30 December 2021 Marshall Fire near Boulder, Colorado. Retrospective analysis of the Kincade Fire (Sonoma County, California) on 27-28 October 2019 demonstrates potential application of IWT FRWs during a devastating run of an extended fire incident. These wildfire disasters exhibited environmental and remote sensing signals consistent with those used for successful IWT FRW demonstrations in Oklahoma and Texas. Evaluations of the IWT FRW paradigm for past fire disasters in the fire-prone American West may provide a framework for future collaborative multi-agency/disciplinary geo-targeted fire-scale warnings for dangerous and life-threatening wildfires.