(The Big Picture)
The 2009 California wild fires was a series of 63 wildfires, that burned "more than 336,020 acres of land starting late July through late November" (Wikipedia). The station fire, north of Los Angeles county, was the largest and deadliest. It had destroyed 89 homes, 209 structures, and tragically claimed the life of two firefighters (Garrison 2009). Nearby communities were strongly affected by the fire, and some of them were forced to be evacuated due to the severe condition. I was living in Arcadia during the station fire, and I can still clearly remember the smell in the air and the heavy smoke in the sky. The picture below is what Mount Wilson looked like on September 1st, 2009. My house and school were right underneath the mountains. I remember seeing the fire on every news channel everyday, fearing that the fire will continue spreading and affect me and my family. Fortunately the fire was 100% contained by the end of the day on September 16th, after spending 93.8 million dollars on firefighting .
(The Big Picture)
Our final lab for this course is to reflect this incident through GIS maps and analyze one aspect of the station fire by studying thematic maps that we created. By now we are very familiar with different tools in Arc GIS and different sources to download data. While collecting data for this project, it kept on reminding me that the affect of the station fire is tremendous and horrifying. Therefore I decide to do my report on how the station fire affected nearby communities and major parks of Los Angeles County. Below are my reference map and thematic maps.
(Reference Map Station fire 2009)
The reference map shows the growth of the station fire from August 29th through September 2nd using colors ranging from yellow to dark blue. Fire on August 29th is indicated by yellow, and it was spreading so rapidly that the area was more than 10 times bigger on September 2nd. I also included the three major national parks in LA county, in which the Angeles National Park was severely burned during the fire. The major Highways of LA county is also shown on the map with orange lines, and we can see that a few of them actually went through the station fire area resulting in the closure of multiple Highways during the fire. From the map we can see that the fire was spreading towards the North, and this was due to the wind direction from late August to late September which was North and North West (Station Fire 2009). In the next two maps we are going to see how the surroundings were affected by the station fire.
Thematic Map 1
The first thematic map indicates the affect of station fire on populated area and major parks. I downloaded these data from UCLA data share web, and it provided me a lot of very helpful information. Populated area in LA County is shown with the pale green color on the map, and we can see that the fire was actually away from the Southern LA where most people live. On the edge of Angeles National park, there are areas that are populated, and these were the areas that have to be evacuated during the fire. Nearby communities of La Cañada Flintridge, Glendale, Acton, La Crescenta, Littlerock and Altadena, as well as the Sunland and Tujunga neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles had the most home and property lost during the incident. The fire was so fast that most people did not have time to prepare for anything, therefore leaving their houses, cars, and farms to evacuate to a safer area. A state of emergency was also declared for the 7,800 acres Lockheed Fire in Santa Cruz County to the north (Wikipedia).
Although residents of theses areas did not suffer from injuries or death, their properties has been severely damaged. On the other hand, the Angeles National Park also suffered a severe destruction. The Angeles Forest is a vital part of Los Angeles, providing the county with -- among many other things -- 35% of its drinking water, and 72% of its open space (Angeles National Forest Restoration 2009). Over 160,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest were burned in the historic Station Fire and 11,000 of those acres will not recover on their own without human assistance. What happens in this forest has a very direct impact on the lives every resident of Los Angeles.
(Thematic Map 2)
My second thematic maps shows different institutions and schools in LA county in 2009. The purpose of this map is to show the affect of station fire on the daily life of students during the time, because I was one of the students who were affected by it. Although many schools are located in the populated areas of LA county away from the area where the fire was spreading, there are a lot of schools in the South of the fire that were strongly affected. Schools from those areas were also evacuated and were closed for more than half a month. Meanwhile, my high school, along with the others around us, was also closed for three days due to the heavy smoke that could hurt our health.
( The big picture)
The fire was eventually contained, after days and nights of fighting and efforts. However, the consequences of this station fire will never be erased from many people's memories. It is the largest fire of modern Los Angeles's history, and it has brought countless loss and destruction to residents of LA County. Through the tools of Arc GIS, we can analyze this incident in a clear and visual way for everyone to understand and experience such events. I have learned a lot from this course, and will be using these valuable experiences to explore Arc GIS later in my career.
Works Cited :
1. The Big Picture. “Wildfires in Southern California.” boston.com. The Boston Globe, 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 15 June 2012.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/wildfires_in_southern_californ.html.
2. Angeles National Forest. “Station Fire.” InciWeb. 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 June 2012.
http://inciweb.org/incident/1856/.
3. "Station fire claims 18 homes and two firefighters." Ed. Jessica Garrison. LA Times, 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 June 2012.
<http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/31/local/me-fire31>.
4. 2009 California wildfires, Wikipedia, Web. 15 June 2012.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_California_wildfires#cite_note-station05-35>
5. "Angeles National Forest Restoration | Www.treepeople.org." Home Page | Www.treepeople.org. Web. 15 June. 2012.
<http://www.treepeople.org/angeles-national-forest-restoration>.
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