U researchers are looking at ways to protect the state from future blazes after the largest wildfire Utahns have seen charred thousands of acres last July.
Four U geographers have received more than $700,000 in grants to research wildfires and how people can better protect themselves in an emergency.
When to evacuate
Instead of focusing on evacuation, Tom Cova and Frank Drews plan to use their three-year $288,000 grant to investigate fire scenarios where it is safer for people to stay in their homes than to evacuate.
Cova, a U associate professor of geography, said that in many examples it is safer for people to stay put.
“If a road is blocked or there is a traffic jam with, say, 2,000 people in one community and only one exit route, they could be trapped in that area,” he said.
Cova suggested that an individual’s home might be a safer environment.
“Some homes are able to block fires, especially homes that are surrounded by lawn and have very few burnable trees and are covered by a shingle roof — they are much less likely to burn,” he said.
Last month in Greece, 70 people died trying to evacuate a town surrounded by fires.
“A woman who took her three children and evacuated died in the attempt, but her home was fine — if she had stayed she may have lived,” Cova said. “We hope to train emergency personal in the best ways of evacuating people and deciding the best options open for the community in danger.”
Beetles and pine trees
Andrea Brunelle, an assistant professor of geography, plans to focus on how many mountain pine wildfires begin because of a certain type of beetle that infests trees.
With a two-year $234,618 grant from the National Science Foundation, Brunelle is studying the relationship between these wildfire outbreaks and the beetles that kill the trees and make them become better fuel for fires.
“We’ve collected beetle parts and charred pieces in lake sediments to study how beetle infestation could affect the outbreak of fires,” Brunelle said.
Research is in its early phase.
“We don’t think our research will prevent beetle infestation, but to help forest managers be aware of when a beetle outbreak is most likely to occur and whether to be prepared for possible fire outbreaks afterward,” Brunelle said.
Mapping wildfires
A two-year $300,000 grant was awarded to Philip Dennison, a geography professor, to study new technology for mapping wildfires.
“This new application of data will allow us to map a fire and the fuels a fire is burning into, which is very important as it shows us what type of fuel the fire is less likely to burn,” Dennison said.
He will be looking at data from previous fires from Southern California and man-made fires to the World Trade Center.
“If we understand how fires behave we might be able to evacuate people in the wildland urban interface areas which are more fire-prone,” he said.