Griffith Park’s Tragedy

84 years ago in Griffith Park, more than 3,700 workers were clearing trails, pulling weeds, and building roads that visitor use today. In the mid-afternoon, a small fire that could have been started by a lit cigarette on a pile of leaves near the golf course parking lot. The workers nearby in the park were ordered to go fight the fire. These people had little to no experience fighting fires and didn’t really know what they were doing, but still they beat at the blaze with their shovels and dirt. Some even started backfires in the wrong places. As the wind shifted to roar down the canyon, the workers were caught in the towering blaze and many did not make it out. 29 people died that day in the fire, and even though the fire in Griffith was only 47 acres large, its impact is felt far beyond its size (Staff, 2018).

The fire called into question the role of firefighters and civilians in suppressing fires. Now, due to the sheer scale of fires in this state and the progression of technology, firefighting is a multibillion dollar operation.

The Griffith Park fire was the deadliest fire in California history until November 2018. The Camp Fire in Butte County recently took the lives of 85 civilians while burning 153,336 acres of land and destroying 18,793 structures, making it not just the deadliest but also the most destructive wildfire ever in California (Egel, 2018). One reason for its horrific consequences is the development of homes in wildfire prone areas.

The Importance of WUIs (Wildlife Urban Interface)

Due to its proximity to urban areas, Griffith Park is designated as a Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI, where human developed areas are next to or overlap with undeveloped areas. This WUI classification in California is notably important because of fire risk in the state and the shear number of homes that are built in WUIs. Since 1990, more than 60% of the homes built in California are in WUI zones (Radeloff et al. 2018) . As California’s population and need for new housing increases, communities expand more and more into WUIs, opening people up to more risk (Radeloff et al. 2018).

These homes are more at risk of wildfire due to their proximity to wild land . Homes in WUIs are also farther away from emergency infrastructure, e.g. fire stations and hospitals, that are embedded in more developed areas. In addition to the risk of being closer to forest areas, more human created forest fires occur in WUIs due to the very presence of people and closeness of flammable material. An overwhelming majority of fires in the state are human started (Balch et al. 2017).

Maps to Explore

Using geospatial data of Griffith Park and Camp fires, I created a story map. Link to storymap: http://arcg.is/1ybOOn

One of the maps from the storymap.

One of the maps from the storymap.

This story map shows the history of Griffith Park fires and the WUI areas that intersect with the fires. This map shows just how many WUI areas are situated very close to Griffith Park. Other tabs in the storymap show the WUI areas and fires that historically intersect with the Camp Fire.

The map of Griffith Park Fires and WUIs shows that WUI areas actually intersect with very fire prone areas, especially in North West corner of the park. If a fire were to burn in that area today, it would have great potential to destroy many lives and buildings. On the other sides of the park, the fires seem to be kept within the park, but WUI areas are still right next door. If not being directly burned, the risk of living near such a fire prone area is still major. If a fire burns in Griffith Park, the people who live in these WUIs would be the first to feel the negative effects of smoke or particulates in the air.

The maps of the Camp Fire show something very different from the Griffith Park Fires map. First, they show that much of the area that the Camp Fire burned has burned historically multiple times. It seems that the only area that hasn’t burned before is the WUI areas. Thus, the Camp Fire would have a much higher toll on human life than the past fires. This growing area of where fires burn is troubling. If the Camp Fire is indicative of the changing nature of how fires burn in California, we are in for many more fires that extend into WUI areas, exacerbating loss of life and damage to human dwellings.

When those 29 people died in Griffith Park in 1939, of course it was a tragedy, but in one way it was coincidental because of all the workers already in the park. The Camp Fire, however, is much more scary. It invaded homes and burned down a whole town. There was no coincidence there.

Land and Fire Management to Reduce Fire Risk

Over the years since the Griffith Park tragedy, firefighting has come a long way. Ordinary workers are no longer forced to fight fires, and firefighting is a major industry that is a significant part of the budget of California. Even with new firefighting professionalism, technology, and techniques, firefighting is still reactionary. A fire starts, and firefighters go to put it out. This year, fires, including the Camp Fire, led to half of the entire firefighting budget (230 million dollars) being used in just 40 days (Daniels, 2018). We cannot just keep throwing money into reactionary techniques like firefighting. Proper land and fire management is very important in mitigating fires before they start. Land and fire management, however can be very complicated. What works in one place may not in another. Take Griffith Park for example:

The responsibility of Griffith Park falls to more than one stakeholder, and so the management of land and fire is complicated. The park is owned by the City of Los Angeles, and within the city, the Department of Parks and Recreation oversees the park. In a wildfire situations, however, the park must rely on the City of Los Angeles Fire Department to contain and suppress the fire. The relationship between the internal agencies that are in charge of the safety of the park is incredibly important in order to make effective management policies. The policies created must also be specific to Griffith Park because of the vegetation and landscape of park.

Canyons, hills, and mountains dominate the landscape of Griffith. Wind has the potential to channel canyon fires very destructively and it the elevation changes make it hard for firefighters to access and keep up with the fire. Griffith Park is also mostly vegetated by small, flammable chaparral plants. These plants are fire adapted and occasional fires are important for their health, but if they burn twice within 20 years, the natural plants are permanently damaged. Large, high intensity fires are nothing new to the chaparral landscape. The frequency of these fires is the problem.

Fire management of forests like the one around the Camp Fire is very different from the fire management of these chaparral scrublands. The key in Griffith Park is suppression, suppression, suppression. Due to the high population densities near the park, the consequences of a large fire that escapes the bounds of the park on human life could be monumentally horrific. While, on the storymap, the last fire logged is from 2007, more than 10 years ago, a 25 acre fire burned in Griffith just a few months ago.

Human Centered Fire Mitigation

Since almost all of the wildfires in California are started by humans, prevention can be targeted at human behaviors. Even something as small as a few sparks from skimming some piece of metal on a rock can start a huge blaze, especially if the conditions are right. So education and banning behaviors that could inadvertently start fires should be able to prevent human caused fires in the future.

Since WUI areas are more prone to fire risk one obvious way is to reduce the destruction of fires is to by change zoning laws for where developers can build homes. If less homes are built in WUI areas in the future, less new homes will be at risk of wildfire. However, many established WUIs are at risk of fire right now. Take Griffith Park for example. Even being so close to very populated area of LA, major fires still burn in the park, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection designated the area as a place with a “very high” fire hazard (California, n.d). The people who live around Griffith are not going to move, so it is important for them to know the risks of living in a WUI. This knowledge can hopefully be transformed to good practices that reduce damage to homes and lives when a fire does break out.

Bibliography

Balch, Jennifer K., et al. “Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114.11 (2017): 2946-2951.

Hammer, Roger & Radeloff, Volker & Fried, Jeremy & Stewart, Susan. (2007). Wildland–urban interface housing growth during the 1990 in California, Oregon, and Washington. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 16. 255-265. 10.1071/WF05077.

California, S. O. (n.d.). California Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map Update Project. Retrieved from http://www.fire.ca.gov/fire_prevention/fire_prevention_wildland_zones_maps

Campbell, Paul R. “State Population Projections.” Methodology 301 (2010): 457-2422.

Cooper, Daniel S., and Paul Mathewson. “GRIFFITH PARK WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT PLAN DRAFT.” (2008).

Staff, Times. “Griffith Park Was the Scene of the Deadliest Fire in State History. The Butte County Disaster Has Surpassed It.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 13 Nov. 2018, www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-griffith-park-fire-20181113-story.html.

Zaveri, Mihir. “As Inmates, They Fight California’s Fires. As Ex-Convicts, Their Firefighting Prospects Wilt.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Nov. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/us/california-paying-inmates-fight-fires.html.

Egel, B. (2018). California wildfires start in the woods. Why do cities keep burning?. sacbee. https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article221385910.html.

Razo Santoyo, Laura. Fire prevention in Los Angeles County: a survey of the methods and stategies used in the wildland-urban interface. Diss. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 2015.

Syphard, Alexandra D., Keith C. Clarke, and Janet Franklin. “Simulating fire frequency and urban growth in southern California coastal shrublands, USA.” Landscape ecology22.3 (2007): 431-445.

Fitzmorris, Patricia Kayt. “Wildfire Management in Los Angeles’ Wildland-Urban Interface.” (2010).

Serna, J., & Karlamangla, S. (2018, July 10). Brush fire near Griffith Park prompts evacuation of observatory. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-griffith-brush-fire-20180710-story.html

Radeloff, Volker C., et al. “Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban interface raises wildfire risk.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.13 (2018): 3314-3319.

Daniels, Jeff. California Spends More than Half of Annual Fire Budget in 40 Days, as Big Blazes Continue to Burn. 11 Aug. 2018, www.cnbc.com/2018/08/10/california-spends-more-than-half-of-annual-fire-budget-in-40-days.html.

Note that the echo = FALSE parameter was added to the code chunk to prevent printing of the R code that generated the plot.