Safety zones (SZs) are critical tools that can be used by wildland firefighters to avoid injury or fatality when engaging a fire. Effective SZs provide safe separation distance (SSD) from surrounding flames, ensuring that a fire’s heat cannot cause...
Alaska Reference Database
The Alaska Reference Database originated as the standalone Alaska Fire Effects Reference Database, a ProCite reference database maintained by former BLM-Alaska Fire Service Fire Ecologist Randi Jandt. It was expanded under a Joint Fire Science Program grant for the FIREHouse project (The Northwest and Alaska Fire Research Clearinghouse). It is now maintained by the Alaska Fire Science Consortium and FRAMES, and is hosted through the FRAMES Resource Catalog. The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.
Fences and mulch contribute to the spread of wildland-urban interface fires, acting both as ignition targets and as sources that may ignite nearby objects through direct flame contact and firebrand generation. This paper presents the findings from...
An open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver has been incorporated into the WindNinja modeling framework. WindNinja is widely used by wildland fire managers, as well as researchers and practitioners in other fields, such as wind energy,...
Part of the Co-Management of Fire Risk Transmission (CoMFRT) webinar series
Throughout the United States, wildland firefighters respond to wildfires, performing arduous work in remote locations. Wildfire incidents can be an ideal environment for the transmission of infectious diseases, particularly for wildland firefighters...
This work reports characteristics of embers generated by torching trees and seeks to identify the important physical and biological factors involved. The size of embers, number flux and propensity to ignite spot fires (i.e. number flux of ‘hot’ embers...
Escape routes keep firefighters safe by providing efficient evacuation pathways from the fire line to safety zones. Effectively utilizing escape routes requires a precise understanding of how much time it will take firefighters to traverse them. To...
Wildland firefighters work in complex and dynamic environments, with many dangers that pose serious threats to their safety. Falling snags and rocks, steep and rugged terrain, and rapid increases in fire behavior are just some of the dangers that...
Wildland fire fighters use many tools and equipment that produce noise levels that may be considered hazardous to hearing. This study evaluated 174 personal dosimetry measurements on 156 wildland fire fighters conducting various training and fire...
The realm of wildland fire science encompasses both wild and prescribed fires. Most of the research in the broader field has focused on wildfires, however, despite the prevalence of prescribed fires and demonstrated need for science to guide its...