Factors influencing fire suppression success in the province of Quebec (Canada)

Abstract

In the managed forest of Canada, forest fires are actively suppressed through efficient initial attack capability; however, the impact of different factors on the suppression success remains to be understood. The aim of this paper was to analyze the influence of operational suppression objectives (fire detection, initial attack, and fire control) along with fire intensity, fuel type, fire ignition cause, year, workload, and homogeneous fire regime zones on the achievement of the fire suppression objective (fire < 3 ha) using the Forest Fire Protection Agency of Quebec (SOPFEU) as a case study. The overall success of the suppression objective was very high (88%) over the study period (1994–2015). Both detection and control had significant effects on the suppression success through their interaction with fuel type, ignition cause, fire intensity, and zone variables. When the suppression objective was not achieved, final fire size was influenced by control, fuel type, fire intensity, and zone. The paper highlights the importance of the operational objectives and of regional differences for both fire suppression success and final fire size. Our results can help forest fire protection agencies to better understand their wildland fire suppression systems for a better adaptation to the upcoming fire regime changes.

Effects of 20th‐century settlement fires on landscape structure and forest composition in eastern Quebec, Canada

“…Nevertheless, human ignition in regions were natural fires are uncommon, is a widespread phenomenon already described from the tropics (Cochrane andLaurence 2002, Morin-Rivat et al 2016) to temperate (Balch et al 2017) and boreal environments (Achard et al 2007). Moreover, the low fire incidence following the settlement peak in our study area may be attributed to a decrease in human ignitions, along with organized fire suppression (Cardil et al 2018), and possibly the increasing abundance of aspen stands, a fuel type which tends to be avoided by fire (Bernier et al 2016). Several studies assessing burn rates in the temperate and southern boreal forests have highlighted the difficulty to discriminate between the relative contributions of natural and anthropogenic fires (Bergeron et al 2004).…”

Preceding Fall Drought Conditions and Overwinter Precipitation Effects on Spring Wildland Fire Activity in Canada

“…Increased fall drought resulted in a greater probability of fires escaping initial attack the following spring in only one region in Alberta. Suppression effectiveness, as we have characterized by escaped fire probability, is driven by a complex variety of factors that vary regionally that include but are not limited to forest characteristics, operational suppression resource demands and current season weather conditions [44,45,52]. Therefore, it is not surprising, based on our fairly simple weather-based analysis, that only one significant relationship was found.…”

“…However, they do not appear to have been clearly linked. The intent here again was not to build a complex model of area burned or suppression effectiveness as done by other researchers (e.g., [44,45]). Instead, our objective was to determine if there was quantitative evidence of DC f and P ow significantly impacting the potential for fires to escape initial attack and the total area burned in the spring.…”

“…Logistic regression (see e.g., [47]) using this outcome as the response was used to determine the influence of the Initial Spread Index (ISI) along with DC f and P ow on the probability of escape. The ISI is an indication of potential rate of spread largely driven by wind that has been related to the potential for fires to escape [44] in addition to other complicating factors [45].…”

Risk Management and Analytics in Wildfire Response

“…Key information necessary to make a high-quality strategic response decision is the differentiation of response alternatives on the basis of relative safety, effectiveness, and efficiency [31], and these elements are a primary focus of this paper. Factors such as fire weather, fuel type, and total amount of resources have been shown to play a role, but relationships between actual suppression activities and the effectiveness of suppression resources remain unclear [35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. Plucinski [42••, 43••] comprehensively reviewed the state of knowledge regarding suppression effectiveness and identified multiple prominent gaps including the effectiveness of different suppression resources used in different suppression techniques, operational fire behavior limits on suppression, use and productivity of all types of suppression resources, how and whether suppression resources can work synergistically, the impact of fuel management on suppression effectiveness, and the impact of protective actions on structure loss.…”