To the Last Smoke

Historical Fires Near Me, 2021

In November 2019 the official app of the NSW Rural Fire Service, “Fires Near Me,” became the fastest downloaded App on both Android and Apple platforms. The app, designed to alert users to both proximity and severity of bush-fires, became the official prism through which the unfolding disaster was interpreted. The map possessed an intensity that belied its simplistic rendering as users watched fires tick over from “watch and act” to “emergency” status in real time. Although temporally located, the severity of certain fires meant they became a static part of the interface. An uncanny habituation occurred for the user as event was rendered geography and fire became a recognisable and immutable aspect of the landscape. At the same time as disaster unfolded, discussion and advocacy for immediate climate reform dominated public debate. Politicians, however, time again proclaimed the issue as “complex” and not without precedent. “Unprecedented” was certainly the defining word for this crisis. The Summer of 2019/2020 saw climate records break so consistently that the term quickly become semantically exhausted. “Historical Fires Near Me” engages with this terrain: both political and geographical. Borrowing from the identifiable and culturally resonant imagery of the “Fires Near Me” app, this interface seeks to produce a cultural, literary and historical map of documented bushfires across the 19th and early 20th century. This map collates newspaper records on documented fires and complements this with fictionalised writings on bush-fires produced over the same period and published in the same medium. By attending to the paratextual elements that accompany these stories, this map explores the relationship between fictional representations of bushfires and their real-world referent. Ultimately, this map demonstrates that the cultural status of disaster is contingent on the political moment, recording how disaster is memorialised, mythologised and finally forgotten. “Historical Fires Near Me” not only demonstrates the culturally significant role that bushfires play in settler Australian national identity, but also acts as a comprehensive historical record that attests to the unprecedented crisis of the Summer of 2019/2020.

2015

Santa Clara Indian Pueblo lands are adjacent to the Jemez National Forest, Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve. This paper explores Pueblo vulnerability and resilience after repeated and devastating fires in this century as a result of drought and climate change. Santa Clara Pueblo holds a rich store of traditional knowledge about the fire-prone ecosystems that contributes to restoration efforts after this series of high-severity fires in the Jemez Mountains. Forested lands and wilderness shrines are lost, Santa Clara Creek and watershed suffers from erosion and much of the Pueblo's protected lands burned along with Pueblo archeological and cultural sites on public lands. Long ago, the Pueblo created a three zone management system that preserved the upper wild lands as a sacred source of water, protected the middle creek as an ancestral home, and created a homeland supported by sustainable agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley. Deep interviews and dis...

Western Journal of Applied Forestry

Wildfire represents a serious challenge to communities in the rural West. After decades of fire suppression, land managers now perceive a greater role for wildfire in the ecosystem. In the meantime, migration patterns from urban to rural settings have increased the number of people living in forested areas throughout the West, therefore; wildfires are a threat to more homes than ever in the region. This study focuses on two communities' response to wildfires during the intense fire season of 1994. Through qualitative research methods, the study analyzes these diverse responses in the context of local social history. Residents of the two communities in north central Washington differed markedly in their perceptions of the wildfires and the followup recovery efforts. We argue that these differences are in large part due to differences in the communities' historical development patterns, geographical location, and the resulting differences in social composition and world views ...

Fire

Representations of fire in the U.S. are often tinged with nostalgia: for unburned landscapes, for less frequent fires, for more predictable fire behavior, or for a simpler, more harmonious relationship between human communities and wildfire. Our perspective piece identifies four prevalent nostalgic figures that recur in popular representations of wildfire: the Giant Sequoia, the Heroic Firefighter engaged in “the Good Fight”, the Lone Frontiersman, and the “Noble Savage”. We assess the affordances and constraints of each of these figures for helping and/or hindering fire management. We consider how some forms of nostalgia position particular humans as heroes and fire as a villain, how others prioritize the communities that come together to face catastrophic fire events, and how some romanticize Indigenous burning practices. Drawing on knowledge from fire science, human geography, and the environmental humanities, we suggest that a more nuanced understanding of nostalgia can be usefu...

Ecosphere, 2018

Increasingly detailed records of long-term fire regime characteristics are needed to test ecological concepts and inform natural resource management and policymaking. We reconstructed and analyzed twelve 350+ yr-long fire scar records developed from 2612 tree-ring dated fire scars on 432 living and dead pine (Pinus pungens, Pinus rigida, Pinus resinosa, Pinus echinata) trees from across central Pennsylvania. We used multiple spatial and time series analysis methods to quantify fire regime characteristics (frequency, seasonality, percentages of trees scarred, extent) and fire-climate-human associations. Prior to the 20thcentury fire suppression, fire regimes at the majority of sites consisted of frequent, low-to-moderate severity, dormant season fires. Fires were often regionally synchronous when preceded by significantly dry years. Using documentary archives, we provide the first description of a "wave of fire"-an anthropogenic signal in fire frequency that progressively moved across the region. This "wave of fire" reflects a changing progression of anthropogenic fire regimes from Native American occupation and depopulation, to Euro-American settlement, to industrialization and declining fire use up to the 20th century era of fire suppression. The wave of fire provides a new perspective on historical and modern fire regime dynamics and identifies socio-ecological impacts since North American colonization. Because the anthropogenic wave of fire exists at sites across North America, we emphasize the need for a broader determination of its geographic prevalence and variability as such determinations could influence historical ecology interpretations and perspectives on past and future roles of humans in managing ecosystems with fire.

2021

The Camp Fire ignited on November 8, 2018 in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Butte County, California. The first 24 hours were characterized by a fast-moving fire with initial spread driven by high winds up to 22 m/s (50 mi/h) and long-range spotting up to 6.3 km (3.9 mi) into the community. The fire quickly impacted the communities of Concow, Paradise, and Magalia. The Camp Fire became the most destructive and deadly fire in California history, with over 18 000 destroyed structures, 700 damaged structures, and 85 fatalities. After a preliminary reconnaissance, it was determined that abundant data was available to support an in-depth case study of this devastating wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire to increase our understanding of WUI fire spread, fire behavior, evacuation, and structure response. The methodology guiding the case study and a detailed timeline reconstruction of the fire progression and fire behavior are presented. Over 2200 observations about fire spread and behavior were collected during the case study. Subsequent reports will detail additional aspects of the incident including emergency response and evacuation, and defensive actions and structure response. This study has identified that Butte County and the Town of Paradise were well prepared to respond to a WUI fire, that the Camp Fire grew and spread rapidly and that multiple factors contributed to the rapid growth and spread of the Camp Fire. Additionally, this study identified the importance of the wildland fire ignition location relative to the community, that multiple parcel-level fire spread pathways caused structure ignitions, and that WUI fire spread impacted the affected communities in multiple ways beyond the destruction of residential and commercial properties.

Land

Society & Natural Resources, 2010

KASKAL Rivista di storia, ambienti e culture del Vicino Oriente Antico Volume 20, 2023

KLEINE BEITRÄGE ZU DEN UNPUBLIZIERTEN Bo-TEXTEN (II) ZWEI FRAGMENTE EINES MITTELHETHITISCHEN MAGISCHEN RITUALS GEGEN DEN WESTANATOLISCHEN FEIND KUKKULLI (Bo 3081 UND Bo 6421)  Oğuz Soysal Aufgrund neuester Forschungen im Rahmen des Projekts der unveröffentlichten Bo-Texte (befördert von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft) verdienen Bo 3081 und Bo 6421 besondere Aufmerksamkeit. Hinsichtlich ihres historischen Hintergrunds lohnt es sich, diese Ritualfragmente in vorliegender Studie zu bearbeiten und inhaltlich zu verwerten. Von Bo 6421 ist nur eine Seite verwertbar, während die andere Seite stark abgerieben ist und schriftlich fast nichts bietet. Obwohl es sich dabei um ein unveröffentlichtes Fragment handelt, wurde Bo 6421 bereits in der Sekundärliteratur in Bezug auf den Eigennamen Kukkulli öfter erwähnt (siehe Anm. 8), der offensichtlich eine Schlüsselfigur in der Texterzählung darstellt. Das andere Fragment Bo 3081 wurde in neueren Phasen der Projektarbeiten identifiziert und erwähnt ebenfalls einen Kukkulli. Die Tafel ist doppelseitig, die Rückseite befindet sich aber in stark beschädigtem Erhaltungszustand.