Station Fire

      
      The Station Fire has been noted to be the largest fire in recorded history of the Angeles Nation Forest and one of the largest in California. The fire occurred in Los Angeles County just north of several communities such as La Canada Flintridge, Glendale, and Acton. Beginning the afternoon of august 26, 2009 and full containment occurring on October 16, 2009, the fire quickly grew to uncontrollable levels and results in major damages to the national forest and surrounding communities. Approximately 200 residential and commercial properties were destroyed with a total cost of damages and services estimated to be about $90,000,000. A total of 160,577 acres of land were reportedly burned, but the damages extend far beyond this mere size. 
      For the purposes of this project I have created a reference map using Digital Elevation Model data from the USGS seemless site that stands as the foreground of both my reference and theme map. Above the DEM layer is the Los Angeles county polygon that was downloaded from the UCLA mapshare site, the polygon was set to hollow in order to just use the outline of the county and added the major highway layer to demonstrate the transit routes affected by the fire and highways allowing access to the massive perimeter of this fire. The DEM is set to a color ramp that illustrates elevation in natural colors that have good contrast in order to show the steep grade in the area of the Station Fire, demonstrating that the fire travelled up slope naturally and directed the rapid growth of the blaze.






Bloomekatz, Ari B. “Station fire is largest in L.A. County’s modern history.”  LA Times. N.p., 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/station-fire-is-largest-in-la-county-history.html>.




"Station Fire." InciWeb the Incident Information System: Current Incidents. 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 04 June 2011. <http://inciweb.org/incident/1856/>.




"More Than 60 Homes Destroyed in L.A. Station Fire | KPBS.org." KPBS San Diego: Public Radio, TV and Web. 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 09 June 2011. <http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/sep/02/more-60-homes-destroyed-la-station-fire/>.