Southern California experienced a major disaster, known as the “Station Fire”, in the county of Los Angeles in 2009. The fire began on August 26, 2009 around the Angeles Crest Highway and spread up to the San Gabriel Mountains, where it was contained on October 16, 2009. While Los Angeles has had numerous quick moving brush fires in the past, this fire has been recognized as the largest fire of Angeles National Forest. The overall effect of this fire has been reported to have spread and depleted about 161,000 acres of land surrounding the area of where it began. As the cause of this fire was due to arson, Los Angeles encountered over a month of disaster, as the fire spread throughout the lands and had a dramatic result on what is left of the Los Angeles County landscape.
The “Station Fire” of 2009 transformed the land of Los Angeles County, as it not only destroyed the vegetation of National Forest lands, but also threatened the lives of many residents, homes and institutions. It was recorded that over 10,000 homes were under threat surrounding the forest fire area, and were required to evacuate the area. Also, this fire also placed thousands of structures under risk, as its unpredictable movement flourished throughout the Los Angeles area. Some of these structures included major communication installations, the Mount Wilson Observatory, and others; however, due to the containment of the fire before it reached Mount Wilson, these institutions were kept safe. Ultimately, this fire injured 22 persons and caused the death of two firefighters.
While recognized as the 10th largest fire in California since 1933, the “Station Fire” was a phenomenon that affected the landscape and lives of many. Due to unpredictable wind patterns, this wildfire resulted to be a major disturbance that Southern California was not prepared for. As a result, in order to summarize the impact that this natural uproar left on the landscapes of Los Angeles County, I have created two maps to reveal the spread and effect of its occurrence. As described below, one map is a reference map, which conveys its spread across Los Angeles, and the other is a theme map showing large landmark areas were at risk.
The first map illustrated is a reference map of the fire expansion through Los Angeles County from August to October of 2009. Through the use of a digital elevation model extracted from the USGS Seamless Data server, one is able to recognize the coverage and elevations in which this fire expanded to. This map reveals how it began in the upper region of Los Angeles County, and was contained in the higher elevations, as shown through the darker red colors on the map. Furthermore, through the implementation of major highways on the map (taken from the Los Angeles GIS website), the audience is able to recognize how significantly close it was to urban areas, but it thankfully moved up into the northern areas of Los Angeles County, which is away from the main urban center.
The next map illustrated is a thematic map, which shows the fire expansion and its relative proximity to large landscape area, as well as populated centers in Los Angeles that were at risk of the fire spread. Through the data gathered from the UCLA GIS website of the 2000 census population and the large landscape areas, we are able to identify which areas were more at threat than others. As shown through the map, the wildfire began in a low populated area of about 1-1,000 peoples and did not affect significantly populated areas, as it was contained before reaching the upper portion of the National Forest lands where populations reached more than 4,500 people. In addition, the purple areas depicted on the map demonstrate the large landmark areas of Los Angeles County. Through the analysis of this map, it can be noted that other than the National Forest lands, large landmark areas were mainly kept safe, other than the small few that were in close proximity to the initial start of the fire in August.
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