Thursday, January 22, 2015

COLORADO PROPOSES 'REVOLUTIONARY' FIRE AND FLOOD WARNING SYSTEM, BUT MONEY'S AN ISSUE



COLORADO PROPOSES 'REVOLUTIONARY' FIRE AND FLOOD WARNING SYSTEM, BUT MONEY'S AN ISSUE

Jan 21, 2015


Colorado leaders are looking to establish a "revolutionary" wildfire- and flood-prediction system that could give public-safety officials accurate assessments of the disasters' movements 12 hours before they occur.

To fund the system, which was developed from 20 years of studies by the Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Legislature would be required to pass a bill introduced Tuesday that would put $10 million to the project over the next five years.
If approved, the $10 million would be spent at a time when elected officials say money is tight and fights over budget allotments are expected.

To Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp, the Arvada Democrat who is sponsoring House Bill 1129, the potential to save businesses, homes and even lives exceeds concerns over the cost of the project.

She believes the state could prove with the effort that it can bring locally developed, property-saving technology to bear far more quickly than the federal government.
And she said with 12 hours of warning, officials could have pushed back more during disasters like the 2013 Lyons floods and Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs, and they could have been less financially devastating.

"This is about taking this new technology and customizing it. Basically, Colorado will be the test-bed state," Kraft-Tharp said. "Two million dollars [a year] is a lot of money, but it's not a lot when you're looking at saving the town of Lyons."

Much of the work that goes into predicting fire and floods now is done with 1970s and 1980s technology involving scattered observation stations and historical data, said Bill Mahoney, deputy director of NCAR's research applications laboratory.

In the mid-1990s, his organization began researching how to couple fire-behavior predictions with weather predictions to understand not just simple movements, but extreme behaviors like fire whirls, back-burning and splitting and merging.

What it developed was a system based on evolving weather conditions that can offer 12-hour predictions and update them continuously throughout the day — a system, he said, that would have predicted the thunderstorm-fueled reversal of the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona that surprised and killed 19 firefighters.

But while partially federally funded organizations like his can develop such ground-breaking technology, the federal government takes many years to turn it into a usable product, he said.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper grew "very, very excited" when NCAR presented its research at the Western Governors Association conference last year and began talking to organization leaders about how the state could be the first to adopt and use the technology, Mahoney said. HB 1129, which has been assigned to the House Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee, is the result of those discussions.

The bill would require the Department of Public Safety, the same department charged with establishing an Colorado aerial firefighting fleet, to enter into a contract with "an organization" — bills don't name specific businesses or organizations outside the state government — to establish, customize and maintain a Colorado prediction decision and support system regarding wildfires and floods.

It also allows the state to accept gifts, grants or donations in addition to state funding for the development of the system.
"This is revolutionary. This is not just a new evolution in the world of first responders," Kraft-Tharp said.

The bill also is drawing support from private businesses. Anchor Point Group LLC, a Boulder company that specializes in wildland fire planning and risk assessment, would like to integrate a more accurate fire-behavior prediction system into its overall hazard and risk analysis, and COO Chris White said he believes other Colorado business and home owners should support the development of this system as well.

"Colorado homes, businesses, energy, utility and transportation infrastructure, as well as our water supply, are at risk from wildfire," White said. "Tools and technology that help define our exposure, risk and provide situational awareness for the firefighting community should be supported."