The Station Fire of Los Angeles Country started on August 26, 2009 (New NASA Image...) and lasted until the early hours of September 2, 2009. It spread throughout the center of Los Angeles County, and was contained within Acton, Little Tujunga, San Rafael Hills, and Henninger Flats. It burned a total of 160,557 acres, mainly forest, but did destroy 89 residential houses (Thompson, The Station Fire) as well as Los Angeles Fire Department Camp 16 (Camp 16 Incident). This made it one of Los Angeles County's largest fires to date (New NASA Image...). In total, the cost of putting out the fire, as well as damages to the area, reached approximately $95 million (US Forest Service Fact Sheet).
While the fire was started by an arsonist (US Forest Service Fact Sheet), it was fueled by a combination of flammable shrubbery reaching up to fifteen feet tall, a significant drought affecting all of LA County, and sloping between 20 and 60 percent. It initially expanded in a North/North West direction, while heading West throughout the last few days. Wind did not play a significant role in the fire spread (Thompson, The Station Fire).
The second map shows the proximity of the 2009 Station Fire to Significant Ecological Areas in LA County. These are areas deemed by LA County to be "integral to the preservation of rare, threatened or endangered species and the conservation of biological diversity in the County," (Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning). Based on the perimeters of the fire in relation to the county's SEAs, it appears that protecting the biodiversity in Los Angeles county was a big priority. With
This is especially prevalent when looking at the most Western perimeter of the fire on August 30, 2009 at 9:14PM. The fire appears to be touching the very boundary of SEA, but does not appear to overlap it, insisting that there may have been significant effort put forward to preserve these areas and protect them from the fire. The very most northern part of the fire perimeter, also from August 30, 2009, shows another example of the fire approaching, yet not overlapping, another one of Los Angeles County's SEAs.
With a majority of the Los Angeles County National Forest destroyed, and significant damage to major waterways in the area (US Forest Service Fact Sheet), it was crucial to save such ecologically important areas as those highlighted in green above. While these areas could grow back with enough time and money, LA County's SEA housed many endangered plants and animals (Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning), which no amount of money could but back. For these reasons, along with the visual evidence above, it is obvious that saving these SEAs from fire damage was a priority concern for both the firefighters and environmental groups in the area.
References:
Camp 16 Incident: Burnover and Fatal Vehicle Accident. Rep. no. CA-LAC-09196997. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Fire Department, 2010.
Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning. "SEA Home." SEA Program. Web. 01 June 2012. <http://planning.lacounty.gov/sea/>.
"New NASA Image Shows Extent of Station Fire Burn." NASA.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Web. 01 June 2012.
<http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/asterb20090908.html>.
Thompson, Richard, Curt Kaplan, and David Gomberg. The Station Fire: An Example of a Large Wildfire in the Absence of Significant Winds. Rep. Los Angeles/Oxnard: National Weather Service Forecast Office.
US Forest Service Fact Sheet: Station Fire Restoration. Issue brief. Los Angeles: United States Forest Service, 2011.
