The fire burned nearly 124,000 acres of the Superstition Wilderness and the Tonto National Monument. The difficult terrain made putting firefighters on the ground a potentially deadly risk.

“Our main value is firefighter safety and public safety,” said Dick Fleishman, a fire information officer. “We’re not going to put people in this ground where we can barely get them in-and-out of there.”

Leaving the creation of situational awareness, scale mapping and infrared imagery to Unmanned Aerial Systems, also known as drones.

In the last eight years, the number of federal drone flights has grown from 260 in 2010 to 10,342 last year, according to data from the Department of Interior. In Arizona, drone usage has increased by 184% in the last two years.

Justin Baxter, a drone fire operations specialist, and his three-man team flew a Matrice 600 (M600) during the Woodbury Fire.

“We’ve been doing a lot on this fire with infrared work just based on how rugged the terrain is,” Baxter said.

Assessing wildfire burned land was one of Baxter’s most common missions during the Woodbury Fire. The infrared and normal cameras attached to the M600 allow operators to compare land temperature as they monitor burn zones for hotspots, which have the potential to ignite new fires.

“The drones are not putting out the fires,” Baxter said. “Somebody still needs to go in there and put it out. But we can mitigate some of the risk, some of the exposure and identify areas of concern a little bit sooner.”

New technology now allows drones to not only spot fires but start them.

Attachable infrared cameras and Plastic Sphere Dispensers equip drones to ignite and monitor backburns, a firefighting tactic used to reduce flammable brush in an area that has the potential to fuel an oncoming wildfire.

The dispensers drop what Baxter refers to as “ping pong balls” filled with two chemicals that combine to ignite small fires. The drones then monitor these fires as they burn brush, letting firefighters focus on other mitigation and suppression techniques during an active wildfire.

“Drones are a new technology that we’re trying to implement,” said Ryan Berlin, a mitigation and education specialist who was flown in from Idaho for the Woodbury Fire. “We’re still in the infancy of the drones.”

As of 2018, the Bureau of Land Management had 531 drones and 359 operators in its service and provided support during earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, animal migrations and search and rescues.

According to the Department of Interior’s Unmanned Aerial Systems Program 2018 Use Report, the 10,342 flights of 2018 totaled 1,785 hours in air, a more than 100% increase in both flights and hours in air from 2017. These flights occurred in 42 states and at least two territories, with more than half of the flights taking place in Hawaii, Oregon, Alaska, Colorado and Idaho.

Arizona had the eighth-most amount of drone flights in 2018, with 570. While statistics on the number of drone flights in 2019 won’t be available until the end of the year, drone usage in Arizona is likely to increase, as this fire season has already burned more land than in all of 2018, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

At the end of 2018, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, which promoted the Department of Interior’s search for new wildfire management, mitigation and suppression techniques. One of the provisions called for agencies to “maximize appropriate use of unmanned aerial systems” — drones — in wildfire fighting and recovery.

With support from the White House and data showing increasing interest in federal drone usage, Baxter looks forward to seeing the program grow.

“I hope that this tool is just like the chainsaw. You’re going to have the EMT that carries a first aid kit. The sawyer that carries the chainsaw and the UAS pilot that carries the UAS,” Baxter said. “Instead of exposing a helicopter pilot to a recon flight or a captain of a crew to hike a ridge nobody’s ever been up. Give them give them the tools to make their job just a little bit safer.”

Anton L. Delgado

Anton L. Delgado is a senior at Elon University where he studies journalism and international and global studies. At Elon, he serves as the managing editor of the school newspaper and as a multimedia journalist for Elon News Network. Delgado spent spring 2019 in Morocco as a news correspondent for Morocco World News. He has previously worked for Save the Children Jordan and Town&Country Philippines. Delgado dreams of working as an investigative journalist in conflict zones. View Delgado’s work here.

www.antondelgado.com

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“People describe it as one of those little snow globes,” said Stu Brown, the director of parks and recreation of the town that welcomes 20,000 to 30,000 guests on any given weekend throughout the year. 

“It’s living in an endless winter,” he added. 

Even in the middle of summer, whether it be piles on the side of the road, up on the mountain tops or at the resort, snow is visible in Mammoth Lakes year-round. 

The town’s success is dependent on snow, but even Brown said too much of a good thing can turn bad.

“Everyone likes beautiful snowfall,” he said. “Unfortunately, when it gets carried away, that becomes the problem.”

Brown said snow is the community’s source of economy, it also sometimes creates major transportation problems for the four-square mile resort town located 300 miles northwest of Los Angeles in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

While most people think of police, firefighters and paramedics as first responders, in snow country, snow removal crews are first responders when emergency vehicles can’t get through to accident sites or hospitals because of snow-packed roads.

Todd Murphy, the town’s public works maintenance manager, and his crew of snow blower operators play a crucial role in assisting fire and police in moving around the snow-covered streets of Mammoth Lakes.

“I always tell people… our roads aren’t cleared to remove the berm [of snow] in front of your driveway, our roads are cleared to get first responders and emergency personnel around,” Murphy said.

While heavy snow can cause problems, it also serves as one of the community’s best lines of defense against wildfires, Brown said.

The snow helps suppress wildfires by covering smoldering brush and preventing the spread of flames. 

The town has seen 55 feet of snowfall during a single winter season in recent years, making for around-the-clock snow removal at some points. 

“A long winter — it’s kind of the best case scenario for California’s extreme summers these days,” said Brown. “That’s why I think everybody is kind of OK with it.”

This year, the town experienced its sixth snowiest season in the past 20 years when 41 feet fell between October and May and arrived in uncharacteristic ways. 

For one, nearly half the town’s snowfall for the year came in a single month.

“207 inches in February,” said Brown. “Divide that by 28. That’s — that’s a lot of snow every day.”

And as winter looked like it may give way to spring, May brought 32 inches to the town, breaking the month’s previous record of 27.5 inches from the 2010-2011 season.

This late-season snow allowed Andrew Schimmel and Jordan Roseberg to make a trip in June from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to snowboard in shorts and Hawaiian shirts at Mammoth Mountain Area where the idea of an endless winter will be on full display until resort officials plan to close for the season in August.

Christian Gravius

Christian Gravius is a recent graduate of St. Bonaventure University where he majored in journalism and minored in English. Gravius covered high school sports for the Olean Times Herald in New York, and worked as a marketing intern at the world’s largest YMCA in Estes Park, Colorado. Gravius covered the St. Bonaventure Bonnies in the 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in Dallas. Gravius won the top award in the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation competition for an essay he wrote about a former teammate’s running career before and after a life-changing accident. Gravius will pursue a master’s degree at South Dakota State University in sports and recreation administration. See his work here.

christiangravius.wixsite.com/website

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But six days later, the interior of his home went up in smoke due to what is believed to be an electrical fire, related to the tornado. 

His neighborhood was without power for close to a week. When it was restored on June 2, Schumacher wasn’t home. He was about 20 minutes away at a church in Kettering.

“Your house is on fire,” a former neighbor’s ex-husband called and told him.

It happened quickly, Schumacher said. At 5:15 p.m. power was restored to the block. By 5:30 p.m. fire trucks were outside his house. 

He forgot to punch off the breaker, he said.

After a power outage, before electricity is restored, heat-generating appliances like a stove, refrigerator, iron or hair dryer that were on at the time power was lost should be disconnected, according to electrical experts. When power is restored these appliances will turn back on and create a fire hazard if left unattended. 

Beavercreek Fire Marshal Randy Grogean told a local television station that after a power outage, residents also should turn off the main breaker to the homes.

Schumacher said: “In those days, I didn’t think even think about it.”

Grogean has advice for other homeowners: “If you have damage to your house, have an electrician check it before you re-energize the house. If you don’t think there’s any damage, just be very cautious of turning your power back on.”

Only shards are left around the perimeter of the front windows of Schumacher’s home, the entire floor is now a blackened terrain covered in hills of his blackened belongings and ashen debris. 

He had to put his job at Lowe’s on hold to rebuild his home, which his family has owned since the early 1950s. He’s staying at a Red Roof Inn in the meantime and then couch surfing with friends until he is able to move into an apartment. 

Schumacher’s neighbors helped him clear out the bunches of fallen trees a week later and he installed a white screen door he got for between  $10 to $15 on extreme resale at Lowe’s.

Stacy Fernandez

Stacy Fernández is a recent graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with dual degrees in magazine journalism and Latino-Latin American studies. She served as feature editor of The Daily Orange, Syracuse’s independent student newspaper. As an intern for The Buffalo News and The Dallas Morning News, she covered crime, developed enterprise stories, wrote longform features and waded through water to cover two flash floods and a double tornado. Fernández recently participated in NPR’s Next Generation Radio Project, a week-long “pop-up” digital journalism and audio training program. View her portfolio here.

stacyfernandez.com

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