1 / 12

Wildfire and Air Quality Response 2012 and Beyond

Wildfire and Air Quality Response 2012 and Beyond. Pete Lahm Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management Washington, D.C. WESTAR Fall Business Meeting October 30, 2012. An Evolving Program: Scope. Public Health Fire Personnel Exposure Transportation Safety.

shira
Download Presentation

Wildfire and Air Quality Response 2012 and Beyond

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Wildfire and Air Quality Response 2012 and Beyond Pete Lahm Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management Washington, D.C. WESTAR Fall Business MeetingOctober 30, 2012

  2. An Evolving Program: Scope • Public Health • Fire Personnel Exposure • Transportation Safety

  3. Interagency Wildfire Air Quality Response • National Effort • Cadre of Air Resource Advisors (ARA) Developed • Range of Skills (ARA 1, 2 & 3) • FS, BLM, FWS, NPS, Contractor • Coordinated and Assigned via FS Smoke Lead • Multi-tiered Approach • Incident Level • State Level Program Efforts • Area Command • Geographic Area Coordination Centers • Regional Wildfire Decision Support Center

  4. Interagency Wildfire Air Quality Response • Incident specific forecasting & modeling • Monitoring – Deployment, Interpretation and Dissemination • Community • Base Camp • Transportation Safety Alerts and Response • Cohesive Messaging - Public and Partners: • Area-wide • Multi-incident • Coordinated messaging • Multi-state/agency modeling & forecasting

  5. 2012 Wildfire Air Quality Response • Incidents: • County Line Fire - FL • Dad Fire - NC • High Park Fire - CO • Fontenelle - WY • Halstead & Mustang in ID • Smoke Program Coordination: • AZ • NM • OR • MT • WA

  6. 2012 Wildfire Air Quality Response • Area Command: • SW ID • Decision Support Center: • Region 2 Area-wide • Geographic Area Coordination Center: • North Zone CA • ***Many incidents without direct ARA support issued smoke information and warnings to local affected public and addressed transportation impacts (Inciweb.org)

  7. Monitoring: -15 E-Samplers PM2.5 Tied to GOES available from NIFC -Data available on-line -More in 2013 Many Forests, Refuges and Parks have monitors EPA???

  8. Issues • Display and Interpretation of Monitoring Data • Communications and Coordination • Who, Where, When and What Message • Weekends • Planning for Wildfire Air Quality Response 2013

  9. A Few Challenges Monitoring – Who does it and for how long? - Equipment Support (FLM, State, EPA)? - FRM or not? Availability of data? Contact Points- • EPA, Tribes, State, District, County, Health Dept., NWS-WFO, etc. ARA Recruitment - FLM’s and contractors now • EPA??? State Agency Personnel???

  10. A Few Challenges Messaging/Forecasting: • Use of Short-term (1-3 hr) Impacts: • Wildfire Guide (CA, ID, Navajo Nation) • AK & CO • MT, NM • OR • Canada 3 level AQHI designed for Wildfire • Use of Long-term (24 hr) Impacts: • Current AQI • Proposed AQI • WA, NM, MT (visual range role) • WA, NM, MT

  11. Training Efforts • Air Resource Advisor- JFSP-supported Training, March 2013 in Seattle • Smoke Management and Air Quality for Land Managers – Online 90 minute course • Wildfire and Air Quality Decision-making – • 4-hr online modular course under development

  12. Thank you! Questions, Comments, DiscussionAND IAWF/NWCG SmoC Fall 2013 International Smoke Symposium Pete Lahm 202-205-1084 The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or a part of an individual's income is derived from any public assistance program. Photo courtesy Lorraine Vogt

More Related