A wildland fire started in Big Bend National Park, Texas, around 5:00 PM on Monday, February 1st, when heavy winds caused a power line to fall. The fire burned grassland…
RedZoneFebruary 10, 2016
Smoke is made up of particulates, aerosols and gases, and identifying the characteristics of each in a given smoke plume can be helpful when fighting fires. Reading smoke can tell a firefighter what is currently…
RedZoneJanuary 23, 2016
2015 was a significant year for wildfires with the total acreage cresting 10 million for the first time on record. To put it in perspective, 10 million acres is roughly…
RedZoneJanuary 16, 2016
The Lightning Activity Level (LAL) is a measurement of cloud-to-ground lightning activity observed (or forecasted to occur) within a 30 mile radius of an observation site. The LAL is…
RedZoneDecember 31, 2015
Since 2001, each wildfire season has averaged almost 73,000 ignitions and over 6.5 million acres burned in the U.S. Interestingly, the vast majority of these ignitions are human-caused, but the…
RedZoneDecember 29, 2015
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been refining a concept first proposed in 2011 for a network of space-based sensors called FireSat that would revolutionize the monitoring coverage of wildfires globally. …
RedZoneDecember 17, 2015
1) 90% of wildfires are human-caused Sources of anthropogenic wildfires are most often accidental ignition by campers, hikers, or garbage/debris burns...but some are purposely started by arsonists.. 2) But the majority of…
RedZoneDecember 1, 2015
On Friday January 13, 1939, Victoria, Australia suffered one of the worst wildfires in history. These fires came to be known as the Black Friday brushfires. They burned nearly 5…
RedZoneNovember 28, 2015
On November 24th, 1956, a wildfire began on the Inaja Reservation near Julian in East County, San Diego that would kill eleven firefighters and change the landscape of wildland firefighting. …
RedZoneNovember 24, 2015
