Thursday, December 8, 2011

Geog7-Mini Project: Mapping the Station Fire on ArcGIS










Overall, the fire was spreading at a large speed after the fire began at the midnight of August 29. The fire started at the southwest side of the Angeles National Forest, where the weather is hot and dry that day and the vast amount of vegetation provides stuffs to combust.  As we see on the first map (08/29, 2:48am), the fire was already near places where people live. Just on the first day, the fire went north and east, to a very large extent. Three days later, on September 1, the fire was under control and stopped to expand. However, between September 1 and 2, the fire did not start to diminish.

The distribution of schools in this area has been put on the maps. On the first day of the fire (August 29), there were already two schools that were within 1mile from the fire perimeter. They are Palm Crest Elementary School and Paradise Canyon Elementary School. As the fire spread, the number of schools under the threat of fire increased on the south side of the fire because the schools are mostly distributed on the south side of the fire. Fortunately, due to the protection provided by the California Fire Department, the fire did not spread further south.

  However, as the fire went north and east, one of the schools was cover in fire on August 31, as shown on the fifth map (08/31, 2:34am). The name of that school is Gateway school.  Fireman managed to keep out the fire from that school on the next day, preventing it from further damage.  As for the schools on the south side, they were not out of danger, since there were nearly ten schools that were within one mile from the fire perimeter on September 2.  Students were dispersed from schools near that area.

The distribution of roads and highways has been put on the maps. On the first day of fire (August 29), the Angeles Crest Highway was the only road that passed through the fire perimeter, as shown on the first map (08/29, 2:48). As the fire spread, the Angeles Forest Highway and the Big Tujunga Canyon Road were both covered in fire. Luckily, the number of roads in the fire perimeter is small, so that the major transportation was hardly disturbed by the fire (ie. Transportation can be made through some alternative roads).

Notice that on the fifth map (08/31, 2:34), a road that passes through the school in the fire perimeter was also covered in fire as the fire went north and east. The name of that road is Little Tujunga Canyon Road.  The fire was put out on the next day “without much wind”1. However, some of the roads on the south side of the fire perimeter were still in under the threat of fire as they were within one mile from the fire perimeter.


Bibliography

1 Jessica Garrison, Alexandra Zavis and Joe Mozingo “Station fire claims 18 homes and two firefighters.” Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2009

Shapefiles and data used to map are from:

2 GIS Data Library. “Transportation: road base.” California Department of Transportation.

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tsip/gis/datalibrary/gisdatalibrary.html  (accessed November 30, 2011)

3Geography Division. “2009 TIGER/Line Shapefiles for: California”, US Census Bureau.

http://www2.census.gov/cgi-bin/shapefiles2009/state-files?state=06  (accessed March 22,2011)

4Newman Library, Baruch College, US ESRI. 2008

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/geoportal/data/esri/esri_usa.htm 

5Markgreninger, “All Station Fire Perimeters (as of September 2, 07:02) – Complete set.” Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS. September 2,2009.

http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/2009/09/02/all-station-fire-perimiters-as-of-september-2-0702-complete-ste/

No comments:

Post a Comment