Factors that affect the timing of the dispatch of initial attack resources to forest fires in northeastern Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The success of forest fire initial attack systems is believed to be affected by many factors including the initial attack response time. Despite the fact that fire managers typically strive to dispatch initial attack resources to most fires soon after they are reported in order to minimise their response time, they may not always be able to do so as the timing of the initial attack dispatch can be influenced by many factors. We examine the effects of the following factors on the initial attack dispatch process: the daily fire load (the number of fires reported each day), the time of day the fire was reported, fire weather conditions, fire cause and the month of the fire season, on the probability that initial attack resources are dispatched on the day that a fire is reported. Logistic regression methods are used to analyse a dataset composed of 4532 forest fires that were reported in our study area in a portion of northeastern region of Ontario, Canada, during 1963–2012 fire seasons. Our results indicate that the time of day a fire is reported, the total number of fires reported on that day and the Initial Spread Index are key factors that influence the timing of the initial attack response in our study area.