wildfire

The Gatlinburg, Tennessee wildfire in Google Earth

March 1, 2017

Google has recently added some imagery relating to wildfires in the south eastern United States.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee
The Great Smoky Mountain wildfires of late November, 2016 was a group of wildfires that affected a number of towns near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in eastern Tennessee. According to Wikipedia, the fires have claimed at least 14 lives, injured 134, and are one the largest natural disasters in the history of Tennessee. There is a DigitalGlobe false colour image mostly covering the town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, but we can also see the outskirts of Pigeon Forge, which was affected by the fire as well.

Some burnt houses in Gatlinburg, Tennessee

The outskirts of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, showing houses destroyed by the fires.

North Carolina wildfires
Nearby, in North Carolina, there were also a number of wildfires in November. There is a DigitalGlobe image showing two fires burning near Lake Lure, North Carolina.

According to this article about 1000 people were ordered to evacuate Chimney Rock – a small town near the centre of the above image.

Find the above locations in Google Earth with this KML file. We have also marked the extent of the imagery and the extent of the Gatlinburg fire (as seen in the imagery).

Google Earth imagery updates – Fire!

December 29, 2016

Google has at last updated the ‘historical imagery’ layer. Just yesterday we complained about the fact that it hadn’t been updated since July. Thank you to the anonymous GEB reader who let us know in the comments that it has now been updated. It appears that not all current imagery has made it into historical imagery yet.

We will attempt to do a map of imagery updates over the coming days, but it will be difficult as the new global mosaics of Landsat / Sentinel-2 imagery make it much harder. When you are zoomed out, Google Earth only shows the mosaics and yearly dates, so it is necessary to zoom quite a long way in to read the time toolbar to get the list of available dates for a given location. In addition, the Google Earth API is being shut down on January 11th, so after that we will not be able to create such maps.

Today we are looking at a few large wildfires in the US.

Clayton Fire, California
The Clayton Fire started on August 13, 2016 and destroyed 300 buildings.

Junkins Fire, Colorado
The Junkins Fire took place in late October, 2016 and can be seen still burning in the imagery. It appears to have mostly affected wilderness (it is named for Junkins Park, Colorado) but it did destroy 9 homes and 17 outbuildings

Beaver Creek Fire, Colorado
The Beaver Creek Fire apparently kept burning for over two months. We can see smoke from the fire in imagery from July and August 2016.

Soberanes Fire, California
According to Wikipedia the Soberanes Fire was the most expensive wildfire in United States history, costing $236 million to suppress. It was worth the expense as Robert Baird, supervisor of the Los Padres National Forest, estimated that firefighters saved US$6.8 billion worth of real estate despite 57 homes and 11 outbuildings being destroyed.

This red line is fire retardant, probably dropped from an aircraft.

The fire burning and some vehicles most likely involved in the firefighting effort.

To see the locations mentioned in this post in Google Earth, download this KML file

Damage by the Erskine Fire, California as seen in Google Earth

September 23, 2016

The Erskine Fire was a wildfire near Lake Isabella, California. It was only one of many wild-fires that occur in the California region every year (there are an average of around 8,000 fires per year). According to Wikipedia, the Erskine fire cost US$ 19.3 million, destroyed 309 buildings and caused two fatalities.

We noticed a reddish brown strip that appears to largely match the edge of the region that was affected by fire. We cannot tell whether it is a natural geological feature (that for some reason stalled the fire), a result of the fire itself or a result of fire-fighting efforts. If any of our readers knows what it is, please let us know in the comments.

From the aerial imagery the region appears to have very little vegetation, but it appears to have been more than enough to create an uncontrollable inferno.

Here are some ‘before and afters’ of the damage caused by the fire:

This was the worst affected area, a suburb of a small town called South Lake.

This KML file has placemarks showing the locations of the damaged buildings we were able to find as well as an image overlay from the map shown on Wikipedia showing the approximate extent of the fire.

Using Google Earth and goats to combat wildfires.

August 26, 2014

We have brought you many stories in the past involving Google Earth and wildfire. For example, stories about people and organizations using Google Earth to monitor wildfires in progress, coordinate rescue operations, map global fire data and simulate forest fires.

But, prevention is better than cure, so to take it a step further, here is a story about how Shea Broussard and business partner Tony Shafer created FlameMapper.

Using historical data of fire paths, they map out the ideal places to graze the goats so as to stop wildfires from spreading. They use the Google Earth plugin to display the map on their website and use GPS and the map to decide where to place electric fencing which is moved around to control where the goats graze. The electric fencing also helps to keep mountain lions from eating the goats, but despite this they have lost 5 goats to a local mountain lion over the last 2 years.

The site also shows the current location of the goats. They do not track the mountain lions….

Has it worked? According to Shane:

We have yet to have a big wildfire come through the community. We are about 2 years overdue for a wildfire when you look at the fire history.”

Carefully planned grazing is not the only thing they are doing to prevent fire, they are also planting lots of Oak trees.
Shane:

We are currently growing 12,000 Oak trees with the Los Angeles County Fire Department Forest Division. Oak trees simply reduce fire intensity. Reduced fire intensity can save lives.”

For more, watch this YouTube video by Smile TV or read this story

My sister is a farmer in Livingstone, Zambia, and she too uses goats for creating fire breaks. She doesn’t have anything as sophisticated as FlameMapper, but does use Google Earth and GPS for planning where to put the fire breaks.