SOLUTIONS
Fighting fires – one forecast at a time When fire came to Pigeon Valley, Fire and Emergency came to NIWA. create a “We forecast and then walk the incident management team and any of the key decision makers through it
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Chris Brandolino
hris Brandolino took the first fire call at 3.40 pm on 5 February walking back to his Auckland desk after a meeting. Flames were starting to rage across Pigeon Valley near Nelson and Fire Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) were in urgent need of some highly detailed weather information. NIWA’s principal forecaster had been half expecting it – soil moisture levels were extremely dry in Tasman, there hadn’t been any significant rain since Christmas and there was plenty of fuel to feed a huge blaze. From then on, as the fire spread – along with the understanding that it was going to take enormous resources to bring it under control – Brandolino and his team became an integral part of the firefighting strategy. Since 2017 NIWA has been providing an on-call forecasting service to FENZ, but last year it introduced several new forecasting products that had their debut during the Nelson fires.
“Over the first weekend things were quite touch and go, so we initiated our new Incident Response Service,” says Brandolino. “It is designed for significant situations like Nelson – we create a forecast and then walk the incident management team and any of the key decision makers through it. We use maps and computerised graphics of wind speeds and directions and provide a very detailed understanding of the weather.” The NIWA weather team delivered three of these comprehensive briefings over the duration of the fires and these were supplemented by four targeted forecasts a day – some short term, some extremely localised and some a weekly outlook that enabled FENZ to strategically plan its attack. Weather, says Tim Mitchell, one of FENZ’s rural fire managers, is one of the most significant factors in how an emergency incident plays out.
NIWA’s principal forecaster Chris Brandolino. (Dave Allen)
38 Water & Atmosphere
June 2019
www.niwa.co.nz
