NWCG Smoke Managers Subcommittee Conference Call November 7, 2017

• Intros

On call:

Mike Broughton, Chair – NWCG Smoke Managers Subcommittee; Smoke Management Coordinator, Rocky Mountain Region USFS; Manager – USFS Smoke Monitor Cache (National)

Ursula Parker – NWCG Smoke Managers Subcommittee Secretary AQ Specialist, Butte County APCD

Rick Gillam/Mike Moeller, US EPA

Mark Melvin, Jones Research Center, SE Georgia

Lisa Bye, BLM New Mexico

Ben Way & Ryan Beavers, State of WY Air Quality

Kathleen Navarro, USFS – Region 5

Greg Johnson, NRCS Air Quality Team, Portland

Dar Mims, ARB

Nick Yonkers, Oregon Dept Forestry

Dave Mueller, BLM Boise ID

Carol Baldwin, Kansas State Univ

Doug Whisenhunt, Nebraska NRCS

Mike Muller, EPA Region 4 Filling in for Rick Gillam

Mike Smith, City of Boulder, Fire Mgr

Jennifer Malinski, Red Lake Band Air Quality Specialist

Colleen Campbell, AQ Specialist Colorado AQ

Andrea Holland, Upper Colorado Interagency Fire Management Unit

Debra Harris, North Coast Air Unified AQMD

Didier Davignon, Chief, Air Quality Modeling Applications Section, Montreal, Canada

• Call for Subcommittee Officers

The group needs a Vice Chair to assist in scheduling and running meetings – please let Mike know via email.

• EPA update – Rick Gillam

 Started process for compiling 2017 emission inventory, a triennial effort; 2014 was last one. March – June requests for fire activity data, calculating emissions using SmartFire tool. Work with State AQ folks to get best info submitted.  Regional haze, January 2017 final revisions were submitted. EPA went out with add’l guidance and modeling, targeting release for early 2018. National Parks/Class I areas.  EER – not a lot new, rule revisions Oct 2016, guidance about WF events influencing ozone concentrations. No one in the east has used that, but in the west, it may be more of an issue, esp ozone EE. There is a companion guidance being developed related to Rx fires and how ozone affects EE. o Speaks to the technical aspects of WF emissions, precursors and how that’s different from WF, focuses on that because it is a more complicated component. o PM2.5 is less targeted but can be an issue. It’s helpful if there is a speciated monitor, that would help the submission.  SE regional planning Rx fire workgroup had a workshop in N Carolina a couple of weeks ago to update the comprehensive WF strategy that the group has been using. One strategy is to minimize smoke impacts to public. Strategies were ranked from most to least impact. In the east, that wasn’t ranked as high, so much outreach has been done, folks were more interested in resources, capacity to do Rx fire, other issues.

Mark Melvin brought up the SE Rx fire workgroup (southern fire exchange), they’ve had it active for about 5 years. Accomplishments= progress in regional coordination among states within state. They are hosting a webinar Dec 13(?) 10-11:30 am. The webinar will be designed for the SE but might be good for people from outside region to learn about Rx fires. Info about the webinar can be distributed to folks through here. Alan Long, a retired UF professor is the coordinator for Southern Fire Exchange and he’ll be presenting, so it will be special.

• Geographical summary of Smoke Fire Season – SE/NE/Mid-West and Plains/SW/West

Canada/BC: British Columbia has been burning from early July until late August, worst season for that province. Information was coordinated with US partners. Mike commented about the exchange of smoke from NW US to Canada and vice-versa, asked about communication. Coordinators at the province level elevates to national level – there was collaboration among the provinces. Mike asked for more information about that to be shared on the next call; we’ve been working on an international sharing program to allow ARAs to coordinate smoke messaging.

Mike said we had 35 separate geographic assignments for ARAs. Most of them were multiple deployments (several on one fire). Last year at this time, Georgia, TN, Carolinas, took off on their fires, in April-May, Florida and then Georgia took off. Andrea was on Cowbell Fire in Southern Florida. Challenges with that one was smoke on the highway/road (Alligator highway?) and also trying to get power for the monitor was a challenge. Solar panels are available for some of the national cache of air monitors, but issue is security – theft can be an issue. Andrea agreed highway was a big challenge and trying to understand components to forecast Superfog events, but it was too dry for that to be an issue during that event. Andrea offered that the guidelines for that need some refining. Working with Highway Patrol/communication issues were also a challenge.

Then June-early July, shift from SE to SW: New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, multiple ARAs were sent to those locations. Mike was running the national cache and was trying to deploy them efficiently/properly.

In July, a # of different fires in CA and WY, Andrew was on Schaeffer fires (CA), Josh Hall - (Santa Barbara) and there were a couple of ARA people on fires in WY.

In August, MT, N. Cal, Oregon… Aug and Sept were some of the most widespread smoke impacts in Mike’s memory. We had in MT, Lake McDonald’s monitor, saw PM2.5 hourly levels of >1,000 ug/m3 for over ?36? hours before the monitor gave up. Over 4200 ug/m3 shortly before monitor quit working. Avg 2600 ug/m3 for a 24-hour period before monitor quit working. W Oregon and W MT monitors, components from W. OR might have resulted in failures in the monitors (8 went down due to air flow sensors malfunctioning). Even techs at Met One (Grants Pass) had one malfunction. Nick Yonker commented that in Oregon, couldn’t even think about WA and ID and N. CA, said that fires were concentrated in Cascades and Siskiyou in wilderness/roadless areas. 700,000 acres of burning/WF in state, mainly in western 3rd of state, impacting populated areas such as Medford, Grants Pass, Willamette Valley, # of days in communities w/USG 2017, by far, over double over any other previous year = 200 days when you compute all the communities impacted. 2002 and 2015 were big fire years, but because of the location of the fires, west instead of the east side, East wind carried smoke into populated areas, Sisters got incredibly high readings during Pole 2012 but then again this year. Rogue valley was impacted most of Aug with middle Sept with little clearing out. In Willamette Valley, they had some breaks with winds clearing out, but not in Rogue Valley. Nick agreed that this was one of the smokiest seasons he has experienced. Mike reminded everyone that ARAs can help get information about what public can do to protect themselves/plan/prepare during WF events.

In October, N. Cal /Napa had their horrendous fires, ARAs were tapped out and agencies needed them to return to their regular duties. Mike ended up not getting sent to Napa because it was not on Federal Land; CAL Fire had jurisdiction and CAL Fire STILL doesn’t see the value of an ARA on the fire, falling back on the fact that “there are fires and there will be smoke.” Mike heard that this may change this year; the state may open up funding to provide resources to help with smoke communication. Asked Dar for info. Dar offered that CA needs to have a more integrated operation, work with ARAs, spotlight on loss of lives.

Ursula mentioned the Little Hoover Commission, funding availability to assist with Rx burn opportunities, smoke communication.

• Rx Burn Smoke impacts to very small communities

It’s impossible to conduct a Rx burn without impacting someone, somewhere. Rx burns are designed so that they don’t smoke out large populated areas. But if we don’t impact a large community, we are going to impact small communities. These small communities often bear the brunt of the impacts. It’s the LMs role to reduce fuels for the health of the forest and to help avoid a catastrophic WF. AQ agencies are charged with minimizing smoke impacts. But smoke impacts cannot be eliminated. Hands are often tied because they cannot approve the burn if negative impacts are anticipated, even to small communities. We have to search for balance. Mike’s thought in the past, just do small burns => less smoke impacts. In practice, you realize that small burns have minimal smoke impacts but aren’t very efficient; costs more per acre to do a small burn, and it doesn’t have nearly the equivalent positive impacts to the landscape.

Mike asked how people feel about resolving smoke impacts to small communities if we are avoiding the larger cities. Carol Baldwin (KS) agrees that she concluded that there has to be some give on both sides to make this work. There is a tacit agreement that someone will get impacted, there has to be some give. You cannot manage an ecosystem properly without fire. Stephen Pyne comes back to that we are people with fire, we need fire on the landscape. Carol’s looking forward to the EE guidance that’s coming out. Carol would like more research on the science of getting greater dispersion heights.

Nick Yonker added that it is true that we live in a fire environment, you cannot get away from a climate that’s hot and dry in the summer and lightning strikes in the summer start fire. Native Americans used fire, we used Smokey Bear to promote fire suppression. If you live in an area such as that, you have to make adjustments to your life to live with the smoke. The smaller communities who don’t meet the SSA status, they try to be a good neighbor, even larger communities get 7-12 intrusions per year. They are going thru a review right now. Any smoke above the background that can be tied to Rx burn can be called an intrusion. They are talking about revising that, perhaps having USG category be the trigger. We didn’t get in this situation quickly and we won’t be getting

Andrea Holland commented that as an ARA she has regular contact with folks and a lot of people are promoting the portable air cleaners. People who live in fire prone areas accept that they live in areas that will have smoke and need to empower themselves, especially at night when smoke is a problem. Typically HEPA filters (not the ones that produce ozone, Climate Smart Missoula non-profit recommends certain ones) that go into the bedroom to clean the air for sensitive people. She’s an advocate of them. A decent one can be purchased for $170, will clean 300 sq ft. There are more expensive ones, of course. Andrea said that Seely Lake was a community that was impacted this year and there was a push to try to find funding to help people who couldn’t afford the cleaners to buy them.

Dar commented: The public expects clean air, no fire. To the point about balance, there is not a no-fire option. What’s the trade off? We are utilizing tools such as Blue Sky, Goes 16 satellites.

Ursula talked about the toxic nature of WF burning homes, the tradeoff. Mike pointed out that while Rx burns can help mitigate and reduce WF potential but do not prevent a catastrophic event.

• Successes/Difficulties in obtaining local/regional cooperation

 In the last couple of years, Mike has seen great successes in CO and SJVAPCD, the flexibility that the regulatory agencies have been giving them in getting their burns done, smoke monitor deployment. Carol added that there were some wildfires that were used as a resource benefit.  In the San Joaquin Valley, it’s very tough to get work done because of the inversions and geography (traps the smoke).  Carol Blocksom (KS) commented that in the Spring, the grasslands of eastern KS, average of >2 million acres per year based on when private landowners decide to burn. She’s asking and finding that 20,000 or 40,000 acres are being burned per day. They are seeing impacts in populated areas nearby (Lincoln) and it’s becoming an issue. Fires in grasslands are an annual event. It will burn every year, unlike forests. 25 WF at one time in KS this year. Handled largely by volunteer fire depts. This year there was a 500,000 acre fire in Central KS. We are trying to shift the burning to particular times of year. Livestock is a huge industry and politics influences the right to burn (have to burn for the economic viability of the industry). Mike recollected that every Spring, half of the state could be burned, sometimes in a very short amount of time and smoke impacts can be a problem. One year, smoke from Oklahoma also added to the impacts, increasing the challenges. There has been a 20,000 increase in Red Cedar trees across the plains in the last 20 years. Problem: it burns explosively when it burns and it is replacing plains with undesirable woodlands. It is their woody fuel load and it is more dangerous because of the way that it burns. It is not an easy problem to solve.  Mike agreed, everyone wants a simple solution but it isn’t a simple problem. If it was simple, it would already be resolved. It takes full cooperation to achieve success.  Mike Smith in Boulder added that they are in one of the most difficult places to burn, 170,000 acres that they are trying to reintroduce fire to. There a zero tolerance for smoke and they’ve been dealing with that. They’ve been looking for areas of opportunity. They were able to negotiate with air quality agency how to best cooperate – smaller acreage and broader windows – in order to get some work done.  Mike B added that any burning in New Mexico tends to end up in Santa Fe and there is a very low tolerance for smoke in that community. A large part in achieving success is going to lie in public outreach, giving people options. If we know we are going to impact people in that area, we have to give people a heads up, let them know what they can do.

• Wildfire Suppression Tactics vs Rx Burns - Smoke Impacts

 WF suppression tactics, when you discuss with an incident management team on a WF they talk about suppression, response strategy, monitor or contain, all words that are defined for firefighters. As an air quality person, you need to be able to translate that in a way that the public will understand. Mike was on the Lion Fire in October in the Sequoia National Forest (Golden Trout Wilderness). He realized that a lot of the public, as well as air quality folks, didn’t realize that in the wilderness, your firefighting techniques are limited; you cannot bring in heavy equip to build fire breaks – hand crews only. No chainsaws, no fire retardant. Minimum impact Fire retardants. Least environmental and cultural impacts. Meanwhile the folks downwind are getting sick of being smoked out; all they can see is that the fire is continuing without regard to their health. Mike stated that every night, Kernville was getting impacted; it was down-drainage of every fire on that forest. While the inversion lifted during the day, AQ was horrible, cleared in the afternoon and then built again late in the day. There was NO significant community outreach, no plan for the community. Firefighters talked about a containment strategy but it needed to be communicated to the public. ARA must ask specifically what is being done so that the proper information can be reported to the public. There is concern about getting second- guessed by the public, but the public needs to get the information.

• Recent Presentations  Ursula summarized her presentation to CAPCOA, will be happy to present more in full in a future call. Mike added that air quality is looked at an impediment because it is the last thing that is done; the preface has already been accomplished, everything else is lined up and you’ve done all the work, so faced with the final “no-go/go” decision can influence the final ability to get a burn done when all the other pieces are in place and ready to go.  Kat Navarro ([email protected]) shared about her research project: Measuring the short and long-term health impacts of WF smoke on firefighters. They analyzed data that measured firefighter exposure to smoke, particularly smoke exposure as PM4 (respirable particle size of PM) and Carbon Monoxide for the years 2009-2012, and found that of the days that they sampled, up to 17% of the days were above the recommended exposure level, 12% CO above. So not every day, but there are some days. From this data, they are looking at the epidemiology and looking at the probability of cancer and other diseases as a result of the exposure; long term health risks. Recommendations for mitigation strategies, mop up distances, firefighting holding- rotating people on the line to reduce exposure. Mike B