Improving National Wildfire Response

By Margaret Gracie
August 2012

A new online system helps fire management experts more effectively allocate resources across the country to fight serious forest fire threats.

Water bombers are a critical tool in fighting wildland fires.

During wildfire season, fire managers must make crucial decisions on a daily basis on where and when to move resources. Firefighters, aircraft and equipment regularly move both within and between provinces and territories to respond to constantly shifting fire conditions.

To help allocate resources more effectively, Natural Resources Canada recently launched the Canadian Fire Resource Demand System (CFRDS). Created for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), the system provides the first ever national outlook of fire load and resource requirements.

Using weather forecasts in conjunction with statistical models of fire occurrence, the system can project the expected fire load and resource requirements over a 14-day period. Fire managers can use the system to develop resource requirements and compare it with existing capacity from the 50 response centres throughout Canada.

Fire Outbreaks Drive Demand

During the spring and summer, forests become more flammable in hot and dry conditions. Lightning and human actions can spark fires that can intensify quickly. Lightning storms alone can ignite hundreds of fires in a local area in a few days; while most fires are put out on the same day they start, a small percentage continues to grow.

Map showing the total amount of fuel available for combustion in a wildfire.

If warm and dry weather persists, the number and size of active fires can increase rapidly. These conditions often mean that the resources required to fight multiple fires exceed a local fire agency’s capacity. To address the fires that pose a serious threat, the online system provides managers with a tool to better anticipate the resources they need over the coming two weeks. They can then request assistance if necessary from other agencies through the CIFFC.

The goal is to allocate limited resources in the most effective way.  Alternatively, as conditions improve, agencies can choose to make excess capacity available to other jurisdictions.

“Typically, a decision to move firefighters or management teams from another province requires an 18-day commitment – 14 days of firefighting and three to four days of travel and orientation. It’s expensive,” says Steve Taylor, project lead and research scientist at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, British Columbia. “However, it is cheaper for agencies to share resources than for each agency to have all the resources needed to respond to conditions that may only occur for a few weeks every few years.”

A Collaborative Approach

Developed with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, the new system allows fire managers to assess the risks associated with loaning and borrowing fire suppression resources, according to Judi Beck, Director of Forest Innovation and Dynamics at the Pacific Forestry Centre. “Fire managers can better assess risks and do it in a realistic time frame,” says Judi. “This helps make better decisions on the ground when it comes to managing a series of large scale fires.”

A fire fighter puts out hot spots in a wildland fire.

The forecasts are automatically assembled for individual response centres and to the provincial and national scales. But it takes an expert to interpret the data and develop likely scenarios. “CFRDS is a combination of weather forecasting, statistical modelling and expert judgement,” says Steve. “Fire managers use local knowledge and experience as a check and supplement to model predictions.”

The tool will help all parties involved in fire response make better decisions about sharing resources. “The hope is that it will ultimately help reduce costs and risks to Canadians,” says Steve.

For further information on fire management, visit NRCan’s wildland fire management Web page.

To read about related articles, see Forest Disturbances.

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