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Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. Well. My next guest is
Speaker 1: fills the role of the staff meteorologist for an organization
Speaker 1: called Watch Duty. And as many of you know, I've
Speaker 1: been obsessed with the local news problem that we have
Speaker 1: all across the country. Doesn't matter media market like I
Speaker 1: do in Washington or where my guest is in Southern California.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that local news is getting the coverage
Speaker 1: that is necessary. And the focus of the conversation with
Speaker 1: this organization has to do with wildfires and wildfire season,
Speaker 1: which of course is such a huge issue in California.
Speaker 1: Being a Floridian, it's the equivalent of constantly having to
Speaker 1: be prepared for hurricane season or tropical storms. What's that
Speaker 1: consumes pretty much everybody's half of everybody's brain in Florida,
Speaker 1: just like wildfire season consumes about half of everybody's brain
Speaker 1: in southern California. And I see Pete is nodding along
Speaker 1: here in agreement. So but what I find fascinating about
Speaker 1: Watch Duty is it's filling a role that traditional local
Speaker 1: media wants filled and we know with all the cuts
Speaker 1: this is missing, and in some ways this might end
Speaker 1: up being a more trusted and a better way to
Speaker 1: do this. So part of this is also highlighting something
Speaker 1: new in the information ecosystem. So let me bring in Pete,
Speaker 1: current staff meteoralogists for Watch Duty. Pete, nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: Good to meet you, Chuck, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So look, we're on the I used to ask this
Speaker 1: of one of my oldest and closest friends lives in
Speaker 1: LA and he's now fond of saying there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as wildfire season unless you want to call all
Speaker 1: twelve months of the calendar a season. Do you concur
Speaker 1: with that these days?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Right? We all know for years that the fire
Speaker 2: scene has been getting longer. And if you talk to
Speaker 2: any firefighter and you ask them after it's been a
Speaker 2: tremendously rainy winter, perhaps, and you ask them, what do
Speaker 2: you think about fire season, and they will say, without
Speaker 2: missing a beat, it will be the mother of all
Speaker 2: fire seasons because there will be new growth and that
Speaker 2: growth will dry out and it will be really bad.
Speaker 2: And if we've had zero and it's been a really
Speaker 2: dry winter and you asked the firefighter what kind of
Speaker 2: a fire season, they will say, it will be the
Speaker 2: worst fire season ever. So it's a standard answer. That's
Speaker 2: the way it is. In California. We've when I started
Speaker 2: in the fire service, so that's my background. I started
Speaker 2: as a firefighter. It's been an entire career in the
Speaker 2: fire service. And you know, we used to have a
Speaker 2: regular fire season, right. It used to start, you know,
Speaker 2: in southern California we would start maybe late May early
Speaker 2: June with some grass fires and then as the season
Speaker 2: progressed and the summer got hotter, but we were done
Speaker 2: with by typically, you know, November first, right after the
Speaker 2: Santa Ana's comedy.
Speaker 1: So fire season in California was the equivalent of what
Speaker 1: hurricane season traditionally was, which is June one November thirtieth.
Speaker 1: That was approximately fire season out.
Speaker 2: West there you go, right, And so there was a
Speaker 2: tremendous right all the fire Service, they're staffing in logistics
Speaker 2: and resources all based on that. And so now it's
Speaker 2: a change in that for the last obviously decade that
Speaker 2: we've have turned into a year round fire season.
Speaker 1: Tell me about Watch Duty. I know where it got
Speaker 1: on my radar produce. One of my producers, Lauren Gardner.
Speaker 1: He lives in LA and I remember during the fire
Speaker 1: in California, the Palisades in particular, Watch Duty became just
Speaker 1: a must have app all of a sudden everybody. It
Speaker 1: was one of those you know, it must be an
Speaker 1: odd thing for you guys to say your biggest growth
Speaker 1: period was during one of the worst disasters ever. Right,
Speaker 1: that's never a comfortable place to be. And yet the
Speaker 1: reason you grew is you had information that people found
Speaker 1: to be factually correct and helpful. Look, you said you
Speaker 1: were a firefighter before. What was the information flow to
Speaker 1: the public pre watch duty in your mind?
Speaker 2: Sure, because one of the roles I filled was is
Speaker 2: a situation unit leader on a incident management team. So
Speaker 2: I can tell you what that information flow was, and
Speaker 2: that is, twice a day, we take snapshot of the
Speaker 2: incident and that goes through they fill out a very
Speaker 2: official form and that's percentage of containment, how many acres,
Speaker 2: how many resources on the fire. So that would be
Speaker 2: updated twice a day, and so the information to the
Speaker 2: public and the media and everything else would happen about
Speaker 2: six am in the morning at six pm. In between
Speaker 2: those hours, there really wasn't specific information about the incident.
Speaker 2: So now with watch duty, we have an army of
Speaker 2: reporters of contributors that are looking at this incident in
Speaker 2: real time. They are digesting radio traffic on radio scanners,
Speaker 2: listening to the real time information. They're looking at cameras,
Speaker 2: the wildfire cameras that are pointed at the the fires.
Speaker 2: They're looking at satellite imagery of hotspots and things like that,
Speaker 2: so they are able to report in real time things
Speaker 2: like where the fire is moving how fast are there
Speaker 2: any evacuations? So they vet this information, they make sure
Speaker 2: that it is valid through a number of sources before
Speaker 2: it appears on the app. So only vetted information appears
Speaker 2: on that app as official.
Speaker 1: But for years before this existed, So how did you
Speaker 1: farm you know, when you were on these incident teams.
Speaker 1: Did you just have a collection of local media that
Speaker 1: was paying attention, you try to have relationships with different
Speaker 1: TV meteorologists or how did it work?
Speaker 2: So there was on every incident management team there's a
Speaker 2: public Information officer PIO shop and they may have one
Speaker 2: to twenty people, depending on how big the fire is.
Speaker 2: So those folks would do outreach to the local medias also,
Speaker 2: but they would always have to key only off of
Speaker 2: those official twice a day ICs two nine reports is
Speaker 2: what they called, and so they could only sing whatever
Speaker 2: was on those sheets. But yes, previous to watch duty,
Speaker 2: it would be the pios, but mostly it would go
Speaker 2: to the National Interagency Fire Center VERA official places that
Speaker 2: would release this information. The maps that you see, the
Speaker 2: fire perimeter maps, the acreage that's where it would come from.
Speaker 1: And you guys are fully private. Is it nonprofit? Is
Speaker 1: it NGO? How would you describe it.
Speaker 2: It is fully nonprofit donor supported. At this all started
Speaker 2: John Clark Mills was in the tech industry Silicon Valley
Speaker 2: around twenty twenty one, purchased a home and then was
Speaker 2: immediately threatened by wildfire. And he found that there was
Speaker 2: no one place that he could go to find out
Speaker 2: about evacuations, to find out about the fire movement, to
Speaker 2: find out about what was happening. And so his thought was,
Speaker 2: shouldn't there be such a thing, this one stop shop?
Speaker 2: And he made it. He made it happen. And that's
Speaker 2: what watch duty is.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this season. There's been all It
Speaker 1: was a wet winner. So that but as you said,
Speaker 1: you know, you can spin a wet winter means new
Speaker 1: growth means more fuel for fires, or a dry winter
Speaker 1: means even drier condition, more fuel for fires. I mean,
Speaker 1: is it really heads tails you lose.
Speaker 2: This season? It is is pointing in that direction, right. So,
Speaker 2: as you know, we had a pretty wet winter, but
Speaker 2: what we didn't have was a lot of snow. Right.
Speaker 2: So even though let's say in california's not snow black,
Speaker 2: we're about right so and not just in California, we're
Speaker 2: talking about to the entire west Colorado, the lowest snow
Speaker 2: pack ever right throughout the west.
Speaker 1: This man, we got plenty of yr snow. We got
Speaker 1: plenty of that out east. It was a crazy We
Speaker 1: got more. There was a stat Pete, you'll love this.
Speaker 1: I think we had Denver had more days over seventy
Speaker 1: and we had more snow out here. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just crazy.
Speaker 2: It's been a crazy season. And so right, I mean
Speaker 2: we're seeing things that the handwriting is on the wall. Right.
Speaker 2: So in February we had a two hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: thousand acre fire in Kansas. Then in March, six hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty thousand acre fire into Erasca, followed by another
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty thousand in mid March. When does
Speaker 2: that happen? That never happens.
Speaker 1: So the March, I mean that's supposed to be still winter, right,
Speaker 1: still right, most no.
Speaker 2: In low lying area. So the planes were the first
Speaker 2: wake up call. A six hundred and eighty thousand acre
Speaker 2: fire in mid March is a wake up call. Then
Speaker 2: in California we have the hottest March on record ever.
Speaker 2: Right then we start seeing a marine heat wave caused
Speaker 2: by this this March right. So off the eastern Pacific,
Speaker 2: we have the hottest. The Scripts Institute is recording sea
Speaker 2: surface temperatures the hottest they've seen. Now we have what
Speaker 2: last week, a Category five typhoon in the Western Pacific
Speaker 2: in April. Right. So my comment previously was the handwriting
Speaker 2: is on the wall. And if you're a fire manager,
Speaker 2: if you're in this business, if you're a fire behavior
Speaker 2: in US, if you're looking at those fuels and you
Speaker 2: are not realizing these signs, then your head is in
Speaker 2: the sand. It's going to be a very significant season.
Speaker 1: How you know. Look, I'm being an East coaster. I'm
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, we're all in. If you're Fluoridian,
Speaker 1: you're an amateur meteorology, hurricane expert. We all think we're
Speaker 1: hurricane experts.
Speaker 2: I spent years of the Hurricane Center, you bet.
Speaker 1: And so, but I feel very ignorant when it comes
Speaker 1: to fire season and all of that. For again, proximity
Speaker 1: is everything. How hard is it to forecast fire season?
Speaker 1: And I mean, and how connected is it to La
Speaker 1: Nina and El Nino? And I know we're about to
Speaker 1: do a flip?
Speaker 2: Right, So great question. So as the forecasters are looking
Speaker 2: at this season. What are we looking at right, Well,
Speaker 2: first we're looking at that the things we just talked about,
Speaker 2: the dry smoke, snowpack. We know that all of the
Speaker 2: things that burn, right, which is what grass brush, timber,
Speaker 2: those things are drying out in record ways because normally
Speaker 2: we start fire season with grass fires, but the heavier stuff,
Speaker 2: the timber, would be wet from the snow. Well, guess what,
Speaker 2: we don't have the snow. So now we have a
Speaker 2: scenario where all the fuels are drawing out rapidly, and
Speaker 2: we're going to enter into a scenario where we're going
Speaker 2: to start to having these one hundred acre fires, two
Speaker 2: hundred acre fires in California, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the timber that wouldn't normally burn is now going to
Speaker 2: be receptive to burning a month or two earlier than
Speaker 2: it would be. So we're looking at in all areas
Speaker 2: a scenario where throughout the West, throughout the Midwest, even
Speaker 2: of a significant fire season. So we look at these models,
Speaker 2: we look at the weather models. Obviously, you know a
Speaker 2: wildfire is driven by slope, topography, fuel, and weather. Weather
Speaker 2: being the most difficult to predict, right, So when I
Speaker 2: go to a fire, I'm looking at the winds. I'm
Speaker 2: looking at as their cold front. Are the winds going
Speaker 2: to change direction? Is there lightning? Right? Typically a lightning
Speaker 2: bust from a decaying tropical system act right, So we
Speaker 2: do have tropical cyclones that might come up the Baja
Speaker 2: Spine of Mexico even though the water is too cold
Speaker 2: for them to sustain themselves.
Speaker 1: They talked about the warm water though, I keep like
Speaker 1: the MIDI you said that, it's like there you go. There,
Speaker 1: are we going to see something we've never seen before,
Speaker 1: like landfall on the west coast of one of these typhoons?
Speaker 2: Right? So, two years ago, we had a decaying tropical storm.
Speaker 2: It was still tropical storm as it entered the southern
Speaker 2: US first time ever, but it brought abundant lightning over
Speaker 2: California that started all these fires that went for months.
Speaker 2: So this year, with that hot water, the al Nina,
Speaker 2: the developing issues on the Sea service temperatures, we could
Speaker 2: certainly see tropical activity further north. We're already hearing from
Speaker 2: the fishermen. You want to know about al Nina. You
Speaker 2: talk to the fishermen if they're catching these big fish
Speaker 2: that they don't normally catch in those waters, that's the
Speaker 2: first sign and that's what we're hearing.
Speaker 1: Wow, with a hurricane, there's some preparation. YEP, walk me
Speaker 1: through what you'd be telling, what you are telling people
Speaker 1: in southern California because unlike hurricane there's not a I assume,
Speaker 1: it's not like you can track, well, we know a
Speaker 1: fire may start in this ten day period. You don't
Speaker 1: have that kind of precision like we do with organized storms.
Speaker 1: So you know that, I assume is the hardest part
Speaker 1: to get people to prepare. It's you know, we're the
Speaker 1: human species are procrastinators. I think we've learned this now
Speaker 1: over time one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: So what we're telling the people is and what the
Speaker 2: drum beat has been right. Certainly the LA wildfires in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five is a wake up call to harden
Speaker 2: your home against wildfire, right, to be ready to evacuate,
Speaker 2: to have a go kit. Not unlike you know, a
Speaker 2: tropical scenario, but really when you're talking about wildfire, and
Speaker 2: we saw this in the LA wildfires, right, the wind
Speaker 2: blows the end members into the built environment, it gets
Speaker 2: into the attics, into the eves. Then you're losing the house.
Speaker 2: It starts the fence on fire, It lights the playground
Speaker 2: equipment on fire in your backyard, the wood that may
Speaker 2: be stacked. So trying to mitigate those issues is a
Speaker 2: big thing, right, So we call it zero zone, which
Speaker 2: means the four or five feet closest to your home.
Speaker 2: Whatever that is, planters, whatever, move all that combustible material
Speaker 2: away from your home. Try to cover up your attic
Speaker 2: vents with a fine enough mesh screen that prevents those
Speaker 2: embers from going in, and basically just be smart. Clear
Speaker 2: your property of anything that's combustible, because once those embers
Speaker 2: start flying and they're going a mile or two beyond
Speaker 2: where the fire is, there's very little right you've lost
Speaker 2: control of the ability to get out in front of that.
Speaker 2: It's going to light anything on fire that's combustible. So
Speaker 2: that's a real challenge. And trying to get people to
Speaker 2: harden their homes, be ready to go, to ready to evacuate.
Speaker 2: That is really the key moving into firecities.
Speaker 1: Does dampness matter? You know, you'll see some people hosing
Speaker 1: their backyards if they know a wildfire is coming. You know,
Speaker 1: all of that does that? What is the level of
Speaker 1: help something like that does?
Speaker 2: So you know, if they wet down their roofs, they
Speaker 2: wet down. The fuel is going to help for a while,
Speaker 2: you bet it might. But as you as you can imagine,
Speaker 2: once a wildfire is moving into an urban interface, everybody's
Speaker 2: doing that right. The firefighters are trying to tap the hydrants.
Speaker 2: Everybody's on their hose, right, uh. And so that water
Speaker 2: pressure that the firefighters desperately need now is going to
Speaker 2: go down.
Speaker 1: And that what happened during the Palace Sades fire.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And then what happen is as soon as you
Speaker 2: burn a home, right, imagine all that plumbing that now
Speaker 2: is exposed, right, the toilet, all of that plumbing now
Speaker 2: is then you have water, and you multiply that in
Speaker 2: the hundreds and then commercial buildings that have commercial sprinkler
Speaker 2: systems that are now flowing because those pipes have burned.
Speaker 2: So that is part of the problem. You have free
Speaker 2: flowing water and you lose water pressure.
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Speaker 1: percent off. And yes, I too, am a customer. So
Speaker 1: we've learned that there are resiliency measures in how you
Speaker 1: keep a roof from flying off. And it turns out, hey,
Speaker 1: three inch nails are better than inch and a half nails?
Speaker 1: Do we need? Is it better housing material? Like? What's
Speaker 1: what's some you know? You know, I'm long enough to
Speaker 1: remember when people worried about whether they're homes in California
Speaker 1: were earthquake resilience. Yea, Now it seems as if I'd
Speaker 1: be more concerned about whether my property was fire resilient
Speaker 1: more than I would earthquake resilient. So what is that
Speaker 1: you described the outside? Is there different types of building
Speaker 1: materials we had? I'd be thinking about do we want
Speaker 1: one story not two story? I mean, I just like,
Speaker 1: let's assume we're living in this healthscape now for a while. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it is what it is. How
Speaker 1: do we live with this threat in a way that
Speaker 1: won't feel like you're constantly having to evacuate.
Speaker 2: So another great question. So we know that the better
Speaker 2: you could harden your home. And we talked about the outside.
Speaker 2: But I was involved in the in the after action
Speaker 2: ANALYSI at the led wildfires and we went through those communities.
Speaker 2: We saw blocks that were decimated by wildfires, and then
Speaker 2: we saw an entire block, untouched, standing, brand new home
Speaker 2: built to certain specifications. And so to your point, what
Speaker 2: was that that was a non combustible roof material? Right,
Speaker 2: So any kind of composite material on your roof that
Speaker 2: doesn't sustain combustion. Right, So the old wood shape shingles, roofs,
Speaker 2: those are just waiting to catch on fire.
Speaker 1: Should we brand them? Is it something that maybe? I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you're not I'm asking you to be a politician or
Speaker 1: a regulator, but if they were asking your expert opinion,
Speaker 1: we'd be like, you know, this shouldn't even be allowed. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, in Florida, I don't think you should have
Speaker 1: manufactured housing. I'm not saying manufactured housing doesn't fill a role,
Speaker 1: but if you're in a in an environment that you
Speaker 1: could get fifty or more mile an hour weds, these
Speaker 1: things blow right over. I don't think it's illegal.
Speaker 2: So let me tell you a secret. It's not so secret.
Speaker 2: But when firefighters go into a community and they have
Speaker 2: a fire coming into an entire urban interface, they're going
Speaker 2: to send a bunch of fire engines to the block
Speaker 2: and the first folks in that block are going to
Speaker 2: do an analysis or an assessment within ten minutes which
Speaker 2: homes have been hardened and which haven't. And those homes
Speaker 2: that have that shake shingle roof that have overhang of
Speaker 2: growth materials, power lines, things like that, combust materials. Right,
Speaker 2: they know that's a problem house versus the house that's
Speaker 2: got right, a composite material roof glass that's maybe double
Speaker 2: pane glass, right, so the external paine of the glass
Speaker 2: cracks in the heat, but the inside maintains. We saw
Speaker 2: that in the in Los Angeles. So other things that
Speaker 2: you can do. We also found that fences, wooden fences,
Speaker 2: they catch on fire and they bring the fire to
Speaker 2: the house because the fence is usually ran up to
Speaker 2: the house. So get a composite fence, right, do things
Speaker 2: composite plastic, plastic or right, some some sort of metal fence,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to do. Aluminum that that doesn't sustain
Speaker 2: because that is what we found brought fire to the
Speaker 2: house that that ended up burning the house. Don And
Speaker 2: now it's on video, right we see homes have those
Speaker 2: cameras were whattn happen in real time?
Speaker 1: So let's talk about power companies. What what is the
Speaker 1: level of power line burying in California? How you know,
Speaker 1: I know in Florida, every time there's a you know,
Speaker 1: new construction, they bury power lines. But you know, if
Speaker 1: it's grandfathered in, it's grandfathered in. What's the situation in
Speaker 1: California on that same.
Speaker 2: Situation, so we know it's it's it's no news that
Speaker 2: the power companies have had failures where those lines have
Speaker 2: started fires in California, large wildfires in the past. That's
Speaker 2: certainly not news. Uh. And as these are identified and
Speaker 2: they can they bury those power lines, we know that
Speaker 2: that in high winds, uh, there's arcing, Uh, they have
Speaker 2: power line failures, falls into compostible grass. And so that's
Speaker 2: what started the whole Public Safety powers off the psps's right.
Speaker 2: So I'm sure you've read that when these red flag warnings,
Speaker 2: when these high winds are expected in high fire danger corridors,
Speaker 2: they will preemptively shut down the power to those areas.
Speaker 2: And so we've been living with that for you know,
Speaker 2: five years plus now, and so it is arguably either
Speaker 2: either of the world.
Speaker 1: Doesn't it was just gonna say, I mean, doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like it's worked, has it?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, so hard to say, right, So it depends
Speaker 2: on if they shut it off and they avoided a fire,
Speaker 2: would we know? Yeah, can they shut off? Can they
Speaker 2: shut off the power lines into Los Angeles in the
Speaker 2: middle of a regular business day because those same circuits
Speaker 2: also provide power to the wildline interface. Right, So it's
Speaker 2: a problem for the power companies, I get it. But
Speaker 2: the more they can bury that stuff, the more they
Speaker 2: can harden those areas. And so really I've seen in
Speaker 2: the last five years the power companies they have been
Speaker 2: very trying to be very provactive with fire danger. They've
Speaker 2: hired a lot of meteorologists that do nothing but they
Speaker 2: put you know, sensors in all their high power transmission towers,
Speaker 2: which is great information to meteorologists. Right. So that's where
Speaker 2: we get a lot of our data is from these
Speaker 2: utility weather stations that they put up. They are trying
Speaker 2: to forecast fire danger they're trying to preemptively do these
Speaker 2: public safety power shut offs. But it's still a problem.
Speaker 2: It's still a problem. How do you write can you
Speaker 2: ever really just I mean, the real answer is just
Speaker 2: shut off the power when there's a red flag warning,
Speaker 2: but I don't think the public would like that.
Speaker 1: Well. The real answer, though, is bearing is sort of
Speaker 1: forcing the burial power lines. I mean, I know the way,
Speaker 1: you know, even here in Virginia, they the way the
Speaker 1: power company works is if they have a certain number
Speaker 1: of neighbors could say no, then well they're not going
Speaker 1: to bury power lines in this community. It seems like
Speaker 1: at some point it's at some point it's not going
Speaker 1: to be a choice. Now, the question is it something
Speaker 1: is an insurance premium that you risk seeing quadruple if
Speaker 1: you don't do it, If your neighborhood doesn't have very
Speaker 1: power lines, everybody's going to pay more in homeowner's insurance
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, you know, sadly, it usually is
Speaker 1: how you get behavior to change is when there's a
Speaker 1: financial penalty or incentive.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so much like the tropical situation in the southeast
Speaker 2: right every time there's a fire, our insurance rates go
Speaker 2: up and I believe that it is going to end
Speaker 2: up being like you stated that areas that don't have
Speaker 2: buried power lines, that have exposure to higher potential of
Speaker 2: fire danger are going to end up putting that bill
Speaker 2: to try to bury those lines, because we're certainly paying
Speaker 2: for it in insurance costs for fire danger. Right now,
Speaker 2: all that stuff is assessed by fire danger. When I
Speaker 2: moved into my house, my insurance said, well we can't.
Speaker 2: We're going to have to cancel your homeowners insurance because
Speaker 2: your house is right up against a wildeline area. Are
Speaker 2: high resolution satellite imagery dictated that your house was up
Speaker 2: against Yes, up against balin And I said, that is
Speaker 2: irrigated association vegetation. Does your satellite differentiate? And they really?
Speaker 2: I go yes, this is green irrigated vegetation and they go, okay,
Speaker 2: you're fine then, but that's what we're up against.
Speaker 1: So you had to prove you weren't a fire risk,
Speaker 1: and you could individually make that happen.
Speaker 2: Didn't matter that I was a fire behavior analyst and
Speaker 2: meet her alogist a spend career in the fire service
Speaker 2: and say, listen, I know about this and I'm not
Speaker 2: in an urban wildline interface but right, it's the embers.
Speaker 2: It's the wind speed in the ember cast. It's all
Speaker 2: they have to say is you're within three miles of
Speaker 2: the urban interface, you're exposed to embers.
Speaker 1: So when do you start losing sleep when there's a
Speaker 1: high wind warning when you know what is what is
Speaker 1: sort of when you're you know going, I better have ready,
Speaker 1: better have the coffee going.
Speaker 2: So the answer is yes, when we start seeing the
Speaker 2: fuels that are going to be what we call a
Speaker 2: receptive fuel bed. The probability of ignition. So if the
Speaker 2: grass or the brush, the timber, whatever it is is
Speaker 2: dry enough and we already talked about it that we
Speaker 2: know it'll catch fire if there's an ignition, and then
Speaker 2: you add some hot, dry winds or cold front passage
Speaker 2: that's not going to rain. That's when the red flag
Speaker 2: warnings go out. That's when my role in watch duty
Speaker 2: is to provide this weather information to watch duty so
Speaker 2: they can proact right in terms of staffing, in terms
Speaker 2: of beefing up the reporters that are going to be
Speaker 2: watching in a certain area, so I pinpoint the areas
Speaker 2: that are going to be the highest fire danger, and
Speaker 2: internally watch duty we do things to make sure that
Speaker 2: they're ready for that. So they're trying to proact rather
Speaker 2: than react to these to these high fire danger, fire
Speaker 2: weather situations.
Speaker 1: We're taking morning early afternoon on Tuesday, April twenty first,
Speaker 1: would you say that you're that the danger right now
Speaker 1: is already elevated and it's you're in an ever any
Speaker 1: any day now, we could get you know, the wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, some campfire gone awry because of the conditions
Speaker 1: that because of the conditions you just described over the
Speaker 1: last ninety days.
Speaker 2: I would say that we are maybe not this month,
Speaker 2: but probably a few months away from that.
Speaker 1: So really starting in June is when you think this
Speaker 1: is going to be a really really ugly summer.
Speaker 2: I think, and if you add the potential of maybe
Speaker 2: some lightning from a decaying tropical system. So as soon
Speaker 2: as you know, so we start in the Pacific May fifteenth,
Speaker 2: you guys, start June first, we start, you know, a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks earlier. Alls we need is something like
Speaker 2: that to kick off what is certainly going to be
Speaker 2: a very significant fire season. And I am very concerned.
Speaker 2: All of my coworkers are very concerned. I think it's
Speaker 2: going to be a very active fire season.
Speaker 1: When it comes to it's interesting to me that you're
Speaker 1: were you firefighter before you were a meteorologist.
Speaker 2: It is I'm an odd duck in that way. And
Speaker 2: then I came to a backwards so check. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: So and that's why I got interested in meteorology. So
Speaker 2: I think you'll find this interesting. So I spent I
Speaker 2: was a firefighter paramedic here in southern California, got promoted,
Speaker 2: and spent really twenty eight years in the fire service
Speaker 2: in southern California. And during that period of time, they
Speaker 2: started sending me as part of these teams to these
Speaker 2: large wildfires. And it was at those large wildfires that
Speaker 2: I realized how weather, how important weather it was, and
Speaker 2: how it basically drove the cadence of the incident. And
Speaker 2: so I started taking if you classes as much as
Speaker 2: I could. I was already a reserve for FEMA, and
Speaker 2: I was considering maybe taking an early retirement and going
Speaker 2: back to school to earn a meteorology degree, which is
Speaker 2: right at that point in my career, was unheard of.
Speaker 2: So I did that. I sold my house, I grabbed
Speaker 2: my then eighty four year old mom, moved lock stock
Speaker 2: and barrel to Miami, Florida and went to school at
Speaker 2: FIU and earned a meteorology degree while working at the
Speaker 2: National Hurricane Center for those three years. While I was there,
Speaker 2: get to fly through a hurricane. And so as soon
Speaker 2: as I was done with school, I came back went
Speaker 2: back on the same incident management team as I had
Speaker 2: been on as a situation yet leader, but now as
Speaker 2: the incident meteorologist. So I was able to get qualified
Speaker 2: as an I met which is the guy that goes
Speaker 2: out to the fire. I sit in the tent, right,
Speaker 2: so instead of running up and down the hills with
Speaker 2: the back of the hose, all right, I get to
Speaker 2: be briefing the folks on the potential fire danger and
Speaker 2: making sure that everybody stays safe because there is the
Speaker 2: number one issue when it comes to being prepared for
Speaker 2: wind changes, lightning, thunderstorms. Right, it's it's a it's a
Speaker 2: you know, it's a big deal when I'm out there,
Speaker 2: and I'm usually out there for at least two weeks
Speaker 2: at a time.
Speaker 1: Well, my daughter's about to graduate with a degree in
Speaker 1: oceanography and a minor in meteorology there University of Miami,
Speaker 1: so obviously South Florida pretty good, pretty good haven for
Speaker 1: for a weather education. Let me ask you on the
Speaker 1: meteorology front, how many you know a staff meteorologists for
Speaker 1: a fire department? Now did that exist twenty years ago? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I didn't think so. Now it's it's normalized position.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's becoming more normal. These large organizations, especially
Speaker 2: state organizations cal Fire and California.
Speaker 1: I seemed like the LA Fire Department, the big fire
Speaker 1: department are doing this right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they have a fire behavior analyst, so that
Speaker 2: the guy that matches the weather with the potential fire
Speaker 2: behavior in the fuels condition, and so they call him
Speaker 2: an f BAN fire behavior analyst. And so these positions
Speaker 2: now to your point, are endemic in most of these
Speaker 2: large organizations. And so when I go out on the
Speaker 2: fire with the fire team, I sit next to a
Speaker 2: fire behavior analyst. They need my weather information, I need
Speaker 2: their fuels information. We produce the fire weather forecast that
Speaker 2: goes out to all the firefighters. We do that twice
Speaker 2: a day.
Speaker 1: Just to give an example. How much obviously this has
Speaker 1: changed firefighting. It has changed certainly some procedure. You were
Speaker 1: on the front lines before this world existed. Now you
Speaker 1: see it. How would you say, what's been some of
Speaker 1: the best practices that have been created now that meteorology
Speaker 1: and experts like yourself are infused into the firefighting protocols.
Speaker 2: So it's made a huge difference. And it's taken fatality
Speaker 2: incidents to for wildfire incidents in the past to really
Speaker 2: forge that notion that weather is super important to these teams.
Speaker 2: So and in the nineties, really we started seeing meteorologists
Speaker 2: show up to wildfires. Now it's unheard of that one
Speaker 2: of these teams would go out to a fire without
Speaker 2: a meteorologist. So we branch what the National Weather Service.
Speaker 2: We basically have them on a constant chat, all right,
Speaker 2: because they're the ones responsible for issuing the watches and warnings.
Speaker 2: So we're in lockstep with them. I'm attending briefings online
Speaker 2: with them. They're saying, hey, do you see this? Do
Speaker 2: I see the winds starting at this time? So I
Speaker 2: carry that information. I hone it the forecast. I write
Speaker 2: my own forecast for the fire, very detailed to the
Speaker 2: topography that we're in because wins and complex topography is
Speaker 2: not easy for the weather models to do. And we
Speaker 2: hone that forecast. But I really want to say, is
Speaker 2: the fire behavior, the fire weather that we've been seeing
Speaker 2: every year. Every year we see more significant fire behavior
Speaker 2: that we haven't seen before. I'll give you an example,
Speaker 2: fire tornadoes. When we used to talk about a fire tornado,
Speaker 2: we would all think, well, that's a fireworld. It's a
Speaker 2: little rope, you know, area, but instability. It's maybe a
Speaker 2: couple feet wide, you know, it goes twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: feet in the atmosphere. And then it's because the instability
Speaker 2: caused by the fire and they you know, the heat
Speaker 2: on the ground. Starting in two thousand and nineteen, the
Speaker 2: car fire in Reading, California, half mile wide, rotating, real,
Speaker 2: honest to god tornado caused by a wall fire. I've
Speaker 2: never seen that before. So now we're seeing them every year.
Speaker 2: So fire seasons are getting longer, fire behavior is getting
Speaker 2: more significant, the challenges to firefighters is becoming more significant.
Speaker 2: So you think about the firefighting community, which is where
Speaker 2: I write, I came through that and environment, and the
Speaker 2: way we teach our new folks is by the old
Speaker 2: guys teaching the new guys. This is what I saw,
Speaker 2: this is what I did. Now in a situation where
Speaker 2: we're seeing fire behavior we've never seen before, So that
Speaker 2: old guy teaching the new guy paradigm is now not
Speaker 2: working anymore because the new guys seeing it for the
Speaker 2: first time, right along with the old guy. Right. So
Speaker 2: that is a challenge to the fire Service and we're
Speaker 2: having to redefine what that is every year.
Speaker 1: What's a data stream you're not getting that you wish
Speaker 1: you did that would improve your your forecasting?
Speaker 2: Oh, holy cal you know, meteor I'll just live in data,
Speaker 2: you know that, right, So I'll give you an example. Uh,
Speaker 2: we use remote automated weather stations called ras, self contained
Speaker 2: weather stations that we can put in the back country
Speaker 2: that are solar powered. They don't require connectivity in terms of,
Speaker 2: you know, any hardwiring. So they broadcast up to a
Speaker 2: satellite and every hour we get temperature, humidity, wind speed,
Speaker 2: wind direction, brand, barometric pressure every hour. Well is that
Speaker 2: frequent enough for you?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: Right? The utility the weather stations five minute data from
Speaker 2: the utility stations, five minute data from most of the
Speaker 2: other stations. So one thing we could use is more
Speaker 2: frequent updates. The reason that it is the way it
Speaker 2: is because each one of those stations, after broadcast up
Speaker 2: to a satellite, have a very narrow window to do that,
Speaker 2: and that there's only so much bandwidth if you will.
Speaker 2: But the technology gets better every year. Now we have
Speaker 2: a lot of different satellite systems, so maybe that will change.
Speaker 2: But we live and die by data. The wildfires in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, part of what happened on the Eaton fire
Speaker 2: in the Altadena area was because of mountain wave, what
Speaker 2: we call a mountain wave phenomenon. So when strong winds
Speaker 2: flow over topography, we get very turbulent winds on the
Speaker 2: lease side of that topography. I would love to be
Speaker 2: able to time that. If we had some wind profilers,
Speaker 2: some light ar microwaves, we could time when those were happening.
Speaker 2: Because the firefighters on the ground would say about every
Speaker 2: thirty and forty five minutes, we have a violent burst
Speaker 2: of winds and then it would back off for another
Speaker 2: half hour forty five minutes, and then we have another
Speaker 2: one hundred miles an hour recorded on that fire. So
Speaker 2: if we could provide that warning, if we could get
Speaker 2: more into details, save lives. So the more data, the better.
Speaker 2: Meteorologists live and die by the data.
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Speaker 1: this is becoming a bigger problem. Is this Is it
Speaker 1: changing climate? Is it? How seasonal is it? How cyclical?
Speaker 1: Is it? When it's La Nina? Is it less of
Speaker 1: a concern than when it's El Nino. I mean, run
Speaker 1: through all of those variables for me.
Speaker 2: So nobody in the scientific community, and I think you
Speaker 2: would agree with this is denying that there is climate change.
Speaker 2: Buddy in my business is denying that there's global warming.
Speaker 2: We know that for a fact, right, we can empirically
Speaker 2: point at.
Speaker 1: The oceans getting hotter, and every year the temperatures get right.
Speaker 2: Every year, Right, twenty twenty three was the hottest year
Speaker 2: ever until when until twenty twenty four, and then that
Speaker 2: was the hottest year level, right, So every year we're
Speaker 2: having that hottest year ever. We're certainly seeing the effects
Speaker 2: of that in the wildfires with the lengthening fire season,
Speaker 2: with that fire behavior that we talked about. Now this
Speaker 2: year we're going to add a strengthening al nina. It
Speaker 2: certainly looks like that. So we already have this what
Speaker 2: they're officially calling the blob, that hot marine area in
Speaker 2: the eastern Pacific of sea surface temperatures. So the blob,
Speaker 2: as they're calling it, is certainly going to help the
Speaker 2: development of the al Nina which takes place in the
Speaker 2: Equatorial Pacific. So if we are headed into what the
Speaker 2: European weather models are calling a potential for a soup,
Speaker 2: what is that? That's say, thing over two degrees over
Speaker 2: average warming in that area of the Equatorial Pacific. So
Speaker 2: if we're entering into a super al nino, what does
Speaker 2: that mean for the tropical activity in the Pacific? What
Speaker 2: does that mean for wildfire? Does that mean more lightning? Right?
Speaker 2: So climate is changing, we're trying to react to it
Speaker 2: as fast as we can, but it certainly has a
Speaker 2: foothold in the wildfires in the West. The fire behavior
Speaker 2: that we're seeing, it's it's been one year after another.
Speaker 1: We're on our continent. We're used to the western part
Speaker 1: of the continent being the most susceptible to Wildfire's part
Speaker 1: of it is that it's more open, so lightning strikes
Speaker 1: are more likely to trigger them. Are we are you
Speaker 1: you know what is the increase we're seeing in wildfires
Speaker 1: and other continents and what does that tell you about
Speaker 1: our future on the West Coast.
Speaker 2: Well, we know that we're seeing wildfires globally. UH, their length,
Speaker 2: their seasonal fire scenes are growing as well. Right Australia
Speaker 2: every year in New Zealand, UH every year has very
Speaker 2: significant fatality wildfires, Central America, South America, the Jungles, We've
Speaker 2: seen those burning. We know that that's a problem. So
Speaker 2: I think it's the evidence is there that globally we
Speaker 2: are seeing an increase in fire activity and it concerns
Speaker 2: me and our community a great deal. When I first started,
Speaker 2: you would have a firefighter vacancy very seldom. We would
Speaker 2: hire a handful of people every year because because.
Speaker 1: Competitive job people want to competitive and now it's a
Speaker 1: good job. Good people like the hours, flexibility.
Speaker 2: Right. We can't hire enough, right, we go from one
Speaker 2: academy to the next. As soon as one academy and
Speaker 2: is the next one starting.
Speaker 1: Then, you see, can't get enough. Are you still getting
Speaker 1: an increase in people wanting to be firefighters? You just
Speaker 1: have more demand or are fewer people actually wanting to
Speaker 1: be firefighters?
Speaker 2: A lot of people want to be firefighters. To your point,
Speaker 2: they love the schedule. It's a great job, right, it's
Speaker 2: the right. I delivered babies, I flew in helicopters, I
Speaker 2: you know, did all those things.
Speaker 1: One of my best friends from high school is still
Speaker 1: better that he failed the firefighters examined. See how I
Speaker 1: think he tried it three times? Crazy miss.
Speaker 2: It's a great job, but it gives you a front
Speaker 2: row seat, really to seeing all the things that we've
Speaker 2: talked about. So, like I said, in my career, we
Speaker 2: had a finite fire season. Now I'm seeing a fire
Speaker 2: season that doesn't end. Now I'm seeing fire tornadoes. Now
Speaker 2: I'm seeing tropical weather activity in San Diego. Now I'm
Speaker 2: seeing right, all of these things that when I started
Speaker 2: heard of and having to demand power to have to
Speaker 2: adjust this know, right, fire season the way that the
Speaker 2: federal wildfire goes, we follow fire season around the nation, right,
Speaker 2: So in this time of year, usually the southwest, Arizona,
Speaker 2: New Mexico, Texas panhandle, that's typically what starts burning first,
Speaker 2: and so the federal resources they focus in on those areas.
Speaker 2: And then typically as soon as the monsoonal rains come,
Speaker 2: maybe in June, then there's a shift, right, and wildfires
Speaker 2: moves up to the Pacific Northwest, and it's Washington, and
Speaker 2: it's Oregon, and it's northern California. And then as we
Speaker 2: get later into the season, right August September, then California right,
Speaker 2: other parts of the West start burning. And so the
Speaker 2: federal government, right, all the US Foresters, the Bureau of
Speaker 2: Land Management, all those federal agencies, right, the fixed wing aircraft,
Speaker 2: the rotary wing aircraft, all the things that the big
Speaker 2: stuff that everybody needs, that gets shifted around. So, Chuck,
Speaker 2: my question is what happens if it all happens.
Speaker 1: At once, And that's a concern you have.
Speaker 2: The concern I have if the monsoons don't come on
Speaker 2: time and the Northwest starts burning at the same time,
Speaker 2: then how are we shifting those manpower, staffing, logistics, How
Speaker 2: are we shifting that like we normally do?
Speaker 1: Well, this is a pretty good place to land this
Speaker 1: plane on. So what you're saying is we are not
Speaker 1: prepared sort of federal, state, local, the collective if multiple
Speaker 1: regions in this country experienced fire season at the same time.
Speaker 1: And what you're saying is because of the sort of
Speaker 1: we've got sort of all these conditions that are that
Speaker 1: are coming together at the same time, the likelihood of
Speaker 1: this is what is it ten percent? How would you
Speaker 1: put it?
Speaker 2: I would put it higher than that. I would put
Speaker 2: it thirty years.
Speaker 1: We're going to have multiple regions on fire at the
Speaker 1: same time, and then this is going to be a
Speaker 1: stretching of resources that maybe we're not prepared for.
Speaker 2: And let's add to that, what do you think has
Speaker 2: happened with those federal wildfire agencies over the past year? Right?
Speaker 2: So now they have not been expanded, We've shifted a
Speaker 2: lot of things. We were basically taking all the federal
Speaker 2: resources under one roof. Now, how do you think firefighters
Speaker 2: like change?
Speaker 1: Yeah, about as well as all of us do. Right right, you.
Speaker 2: Ask any firefighters are two things they don't like the
Speaker 2: way things are and change.
Speaker 1: Right, Welcome to the American voter. Hey, we need change,
Speaker 1: but I want that change, Okay, exact voter.
Speaker 2: So yes, I have a concern that we're going to
Speaker 2: have overlapping fire seasons that is going to challenge us
Speaker 2: in terms of our resource and capabilities this year.
Speaker 1: I do, and I think, Look, I'll tell you the
Speaker 1: biggest issue that I worry about, just sort of politically
Speaker 1: on this is that there's this perception this is a
Speaker 1: West coast problem, and you're talking to me about Kansas
Speaker 1: and Nebraska. Last time I checked either one of those
Speaker 1: states around the West coast, Like, this is essentially west
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi problem, isn't it.
Speaker 2: This is the year?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: The wake up call was a six hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: thousand acre fire in Nebraska in March. That was the
Speaker 2: wake up call. If we can do that now, we're
Speaker 2: really in trouble. So Colorado, the state of Colorado.
Speaker 1: They had their season a couple of years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we know.
Speaker 2: Absolutely the least snowpack on record ever to their record keeping.
Speaker 2: The Colorado the state of Colorado are a red flag warning. Right,
Speaker 2: is something that the National Weather Service issues when they
Speaker 2: have significant fire weather. Right. I think the state of
Speaker 2: Colorado has been under a red flag warning. I think
Speaker 2: at least thirty times in the last month and a half.
Speaker 2: So now you're the fire chief. I hate to put that, like,
Speaker 2: what does that do? That numbs people, doesn't it? Well,
Speaker 2: that's my point. That's what I'm going to ask you.
Speaker 2: So if you're the fire chief and I tell you
Speaker 2: that there's a red flag warning and you're going to
Speaker 2: respond to that, do you respond the same way many
Speaker 2: times later? It's the same issue that occurred in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: This happens with hurricane watches versus warnings and how wanting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I went through her an infamous hurricane called
Speaker 1: Hurricane Andrew. And when that hit. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: it was it was so devastating is that South Florida
Speaker 1: had gone through like twenty misses. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: in my childhood, and so people just got used to it.
Speaker 1: How we're all experts. You know, it's going to turn
Speaker 1: north because they all turn north, and then this one
Speaker 1: didn't turn north.
Speaker 2: It only takes one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's and that's always the case. Well, man,
Speaker 1: I learned a lot here. I don't. It sounds like, Look,
Speaker 1: you're not an activist, but if you could sound the alarm,
Speaker 1: you'd like to get more people paying attention to that
Speaker 1: we need. Doesn't sound like we have the resources to
Speaker 1: deal with what we could be facing this calendar.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a very significant year.
Speaker 2: I think folks to prepare, do all the things that
Speaker 2: we talked about hard in your home, download watch Duty one,
Speaker 2: stop shopping back.
Speaker 1: You guys are ination. You're not just a California here, right,
Speaker 1: it's a nation.
Speaker 2: It's the coonus.
Speaker 1: You bet focused on wildfires.
Speaker 2: Correct, Currently we're focused on waterfires, but we're probably going
Speaker 2: to expand to other areas. Uh, there's a good chance
Speaker 2: of flooding, right, so we're seeing a lot.
Speaker 1: Of another thing that the forecasting on flooding is not
Speaker 1: as accurate as we wish it were.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a challenge, right, So there's this sort of
Speaker 2: an insidious thing. Right, There's a lot of reasons that
Speaker 2: flooding occurs. But we can use the watch Duty paradigm
Speaker 2: and machinery and focus on flooding. Also. Yeah, that's something
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: It seems like we're pretty good at hurricanes because there
Speaker 1: there are even regular storms because you can track them, right,
Speaker 1: or it's footing and yeah, yeah, with the other stuff,
Speaker 1: there's too many other variables that it's just hard to acount.
Speaker 2: For right, You've got So, we had the significant flooding
Speaker 2: in the last few days in the Great Lakes region, right, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: major flooding those rivers, right, So they had very slow
Speaker 2: moving thunderstorms that rained some of them two inches an
Speaker 2: hour and sat for days at a time. So they're
Speaker 2: still dealing with very significant flooding. But there's the surprise flooding, right,
Speaker 2: the very unfortunate accident that occurred last year in Texas
Speaker 2: right in the hill country with the fatalities, right, So
Speaker 2: those were slow moving thunderstorms overnight, non moving pausing that.
Speaker 2: So we feel that we can focus our watch duty
Speaker 2: army and kind of help with with that same issue.
Speaker 1: Well, regardless of where anybody is on the politics of
Speaker 1: climate change, the issue is we need to do more
Speaker 1: warnings and be able to you know, mitigate and be
Speaker 1: able to respond. And it seems to me that that's
Speaker 1: I really hope it isn't politics that is slowing down
Speaker 1: the amount of resources going into this. I think just
Speaker 1: as we've never had better data, we've never had the
Speaker 1: ability to be better at this than now. We just
Speaker 1: need the political will to fund these entities. Right.
Speaker 2: We need to respond, and we need to not be
Speaker 2: fatigued to buy warnings, and we need to really pay
Speaker 2: attention to what's happening. We have the data, we just
Speaker 2: have to respond to it.
Speaker 1: Pete Current, great to meet you really learned a lot,
Speaker 1: and man, you're pretty good at this. You've got a
Speaker 1: good meteorology. Is also got to be able to communicate
Speaker 1: the science, you know. Thank you to speak you speak American,
Speaker 1: you don't just speak English, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I'm used to having to brief firefighters right right, you
Speaker 2: got thirty second attention span. You got to get in
Speaker 2: and get out there.
Speaker 1: You go. Nice work. Good to meet you, Pete.
Speaker 2: Thank you, sir, appreciate it. Thank you, Cheb