Proposed Implementation of Warn-on-Detection Fire Warnings for Public and Firefighter Safety

The lack of fire-specific warning protocols to influence public and firefighter safety has garnered widespread attention following recent national wildfire disasters. Meanwhile, operational recognition of dangerous wildfire environments, and technology to remotely detect wildland fire ignition and behavior, has improved dramatically. Deployment of GOES-16/17, and their Advanced Baseline Imagers, is a “game changer” for wildland fire detection. National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters have leveraged GOES-16 era technology to provide real-time notifications of wildfires since 2016. Many notifications are received prior to emergency 911 calls, and in some cases have facilitated rapid response to fires that saved lives and property. By applying knowledge of fire environments that support particularly dangerous wildfires, expertise in high-resolution meteorological remote sensing technology to detect extreme fire behavior, and the means to disseminate existing hazard messaging, NWS meteorologists and state forestry fire analysts in Oklahoma and Texas have jointly proposed implementation of experimental warn-on-detection fire warnings. These warnings communicate text and polygon messages that identify potentially dangerous wildfires similar to tornado, severe thunderstorm, and flash flood warnings. This presentation will document the collaborative process with fire/emergency/forestry agencies, as well as the development of warning decision aids and forecaster training which demonstrate a path toward implementing warn-on-detection fire warnings. Forecaster decision making based upon satellite-derived signals of extreme fire behavior during fire warning simulations also is evaluated. This process may serve as a prototype for future phenomena-based fire warnings that modernize the current Red Flag Warning program toward an impacts-based paradigm.