Lab Assignment #7: Mapping the Station Fire in ArcGIS

The LA County station fire took place this summer starting on August 26th and is recorded to be one of the 10 largest fires in southern California since 1933. It took place in the Angeles National forest and is now 100% contained although at the peak of the flames 2 firefighters were killed and 22 people injured in total (LA County Fire). The Angeles National Forest will be closed until further notice to give the area time to heal after such a devastating blaze (InciWeb).

For my assignment I included a reference map of the station fire which shows the spread of the fire according to the date in which the perimeter was recording. In order to show the spread of the fire I moved the first recorded perimeter which was on August 28th to the back so that the spread can be more easily seen. Each color corresponds to a recorded perimeter. This way it can be clearly seen that from August 29th to September 2nd the fire grew (LA County Enterprise GIS).

The only discrepency in the reference map of the station fire perimeter is between August 28th and August 29th in which the fire seems to significantly shrink. This may be due to mislabeled data since it is unlikely that such a large fire shrunk so much in 12 to 24 hours. The other map I included is a map of the station fire spread within a map of LA county so the area of the fire is better represented. Although there are no roads, cities or landmarks, the large area of the fire can be easily located within the Los Angeles area.

The other map I included is a thematic map of LA county which shows the outline of the two largest perimeters of the station fire in relation to cities, roads, interstates and largely populated areas within LA county. According to the information on the map, the cities and populations most affected by the fire are La Crescenta, La Canada and Altadena (NACO), because they are the cities closest to the largest perimeter of the fire. The major cities most likely affected were Burbank, Glendale and Pasedena. According to the map anything near the 210 interstate was also at risk because of the close proximity to the fire perimeter. One problem with the information on the map is that the cities are small dots to signify the center of the city but not the general area. The cities also have no labels to show which areas were affected. That is why I included densely populated areas on my map to be able to better see the city limits that were affected by the fire (UCLA MapShare).

The blue areas on the map are the most largely populated areas in LA county. As you can see most of these areas surround cities. Populations affected that aren't within the densely populated areas were no doubt truckers and those who commute through the affected area on the two major roads that run through the fire perimeter. Any detour would be long and out of the way. Luckily although also unfortunately, the fire took place within a national forest which is a mostly unpopulated area which is why only a few cities were affected.

Works Cited

1. Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS: Geospatial Technology for the Citizens of Los Angeles County
(http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/)
Accessed: November 17, 2009

2. UCLA Mapshare: GIS at UCLA
(http://gis.ats.ucla.edu)
Accessed: November 17, 2009

3. InciWeb The Incident Information System
(http://inciweb.org/incident/1856/)
Accessed: November 23rd, 2009

4. NACO: National Association of Counties
(http://www.naco.org)
Accessed: November 23rd, 2009

5. LA County Fire: The Unofficial Site
(http://www.lacountyfire.com)