A Historical Perspective to Inform Strategic Planning for 2020 End-of-Year Wildland Fire Response Efforts

A severe outbreak of wildfire across the US Pacific Coast during August 2020 led to persistent fire activity through end summer. In late September, Fire Weather Outlooks predicted higher than usual into winter in parts California, with concomitant elevated danger Southeastern US. To help inform regional and national allocation firefighting personnel equipment, we developed visualizations resource use recent season, high-demand analogs. Our provided an overview crew, engine, dozer, aerial resource, incident management team usage by geographic area. While these afforded information that managers needed support their decisions regarding allocation, they also revealed a potentially significant gap between demand late-season availability is only likely increase over time due lengthening seasons. This highlights need for increased assessment suppression acquisition systems that, date, have been poorly studied.