Mapping flames

As those who live in highly flammable areas know, fires change with the wind -- and trying to map them is almost as hard as predicting where a fire might spread next. Graphics over the past few days of the fire near Sierra Madre have tried to show the burn areas and the areas of evacuation, even as those situations change by the minute.

The blaze began Saturday afternoon; because initial reports had it burning out before it would threaten homes, no map was put together for Sunday's newspaper. By Sunday morning, however, the fire had grown more dangerous; evacuations had started late Saturday night, so editors at The Times' website quickly put together an interactive Google map showing the evacuation area, based on information from the city of Sierra Madre. That map was posted by midday Sunday, and continues to be updated as the story is updated. (It's a part of the current story, linked above.)

In this case, a reporter with a cellphone was the first step in the process of showing readers exactly what was going on: Steve Hymon, at a news conference in Sierra Madre's rec center Sunday afternoon, snapped a photo of the huge map that city and county authorities were using to plan their firefighting strategies. He sent it by e-mail to artist Matt Moody in The Times' graphics department, who quickly updated the online map. Moody then turned his attention back to re-creating the map for the print edition, a task that ended up taking several hours.

Hymon's map showed the area that was burning, but typically maps of evacuation areas are easiest to do in a hurry. Officials generally describe the evacuation zones using city streets or freeways, so a graphic artist simply needs to find those streets on a reference map and then translate them to the mapping software that we use for print and online.

During a wildfire, layers of information may come from layers of officials, as city, county and state officials try to coordinate firefighting efforts. Mapping an accurate outline of where a fire is actually burning is often difficult, says graphics editor Les Dunseith, in part because fire managers might draw a fire’s perimeter as the area where firefighters have been deployed, rather than the area that has actually been affected by a blaze. And those details may conflict with information coming from journalists in the field, from residents in the affected area and, most important, from the firefighters themselves. 

The terminology can also be a hurdle to providing a map that clearly shows where a fire is taking place. “Fire perimeter,” “burn area” and “evacuation boundaries” are sometimes used in different ways by different agencies. Meanwhile, the fire itself defies easy mapping as it moves, expands, contracts and jumps by the minute.

Dunseith and the graphics staff rely primarily on what he calls the “official” firefighting website -- sort of a one-stop shop that takes and disseminates information from the many agencies to keep the public informed of facts about active wildfires.

By Sunday evening at 6, those agencies had formed a team that assumed command of the fire. 

The graphics staff at the L.A. Times keeps an eye out for official updates, but there is often a substantial lag time between news events and official confirmation of what's happened, so compromises have to be made in the interest of time. For example, while fires are blazing, says Dunseith, "we normally 'feather' the edges of the fire boundaries to indicate to the readers that they should be viewed as a general guideline and not exact borders." Readers might not see the final details on fire perimeters (or "burn areas," depending on whose terminology is being used) until days or weeks later, when additional on-site mapping and other investigations by fire experts have been completed.

Photo of map by Times staff writer Steve Hymon.