ZFPS

2009 fire season close out

2010-03-19T11:38:00.000+02:00

Greetings all

Here is some close out data for the 2009 Fire season.

What an amazing fire season for the landowners. Not exceptionally wet, apart from February and August, but just enough rain to keep the FDIs low and fire behaviour in check.

				FDI TOTALS KWAMBO 2009

	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC	TOTALS	LT Avg
BLUE FDI	9	15	11	7	8	5		8	6	16	16	18	119	93
GREEN FDI	15	13	11	18	20	17	14	10	16	15	9	7	165	136
YELLOW FDI	6		9	5	3	6	16	12	5		5	4	71	59
ORANGE FDI	1					2		1	3			2	9	21
RED FDI													0	2
Days	31	28	31	30	31	30	30	31	30	31	30	31	364
No of Fires	47	34	40	75	40	27	26	17	42	5	14	19	386	362	24
Rainfall	123	246	50	71	68	39	11	135	42	110	125	82	1102	1125	-23

This is a really good picture!

All in all a really good year. Well done to all the people that made it that way!

Trevor Wilson

2009 fire season Update

2009-09-28T13:39:00.000+02:00

Greetings all

A little birdie reminded me that the last time I updated the news was a loooong time ago!

Here goes…

What an amazing fire season for the landowners. Not exceptionally wet, apart from August, but just enough rain to keep the FDIs low and fire behaviour in check.

		FDI TOTALS KWAMBO 2009

	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC	TOTALS	LT Avg
BLUE FDI	9	15	11	7	8	5		8	3				66	93
GREEN FDI	15	13	11	18	20	17	14	10	16				134	136
YELLOW FDI	6		9	5	3	6	16	12	5				62	59
ORANGE FDI	1					2		1	3				7	21
RED FDI													0	2
Days	31	28	31	30	31	30	30	31	27	0	0	0	269
No of Fires	47	34	40	75	40	27	26	17	42	0	0	0	348	362
Rainfall	123	246	50	71	68	39	11	135	31	0	0	0	774	1125

This is a really good picture!

Inland is looking even better with very few fires and really good rains in September.

All in all this is a good year…but it isn’t finished yet!! Stay tuned for more info as it becomes available.

Trevor Wilson

Red light flashing

2009-04-02T08:07:00.000+02:00

Greetings all

I’m pretty sure you guys have been waiting for this email so here goes…

Our honey season is definitely running late due to the good rains in Feb. It seems like when the Eucs are under stress from dry hot conditions in Jan/Feb they flower. This brings on a early honey season with the spike in March. When Jan/Feb is wet the flowering seems to roll over into April. I have seen large areas that are only just starting to flower. Obviously the bees take a while to get to full honey production, and this is further proved by speaking to the contractors pulling hives, where they are mainly finding empty combs at the moment. All this is showing us is that we aren’t really in honey season yet!! Here is the graph

JAN

FEB

MAR

APR

MAY

JUN

JUL

AUG

SEP

OCT

NOV

DEC

TOTALS

LT Avg

BLUE FDI

GREEN FDI

136

YELLOW FDI

ORANGE FDI

RED FDI

Days

No of Fires

125

362

Rainfall

123

246

421

1125

Here is how the fires per day have gone:

January	Rain	Fires	February	Rain	Fires	March	Rain	Fires	April	Rain	Fires
1	4	2	1			1			1	2	4
2			2			2			2
3	6	4	3	9		3			3
4	1		4	26		4	15		4
5	5	1	5	1		5	15		5
6		4	6	9		6	13		6
7		1	7		1	7			7
8			8		2	8			8
9		1	9			9		2	9
10	6	6	10	40	5	10			10
11			11	29		11		1	11
12	1		12	1		12		2	12
13	4		13			13			13
14	2		14			14	3		14
15		2	15		1	15			15
16		2	16			16		1	16
17	7		17		2	17	3		17
18	8		18		10	18	1		18
19	10		19		1	19			19
20	2		20			20		1	20
21		1	21		3	21		6	21
22		3	22	11	4	22		3	22
23			23	55		23		3	23
24		2	24			24		3	24
25		2	25		1	25		3	25
26		12	26		4	26		1	26
27	4	4	27			27		1	27
28	60		28	65		28		4	28
29	3					29		7	29
30						30		1	30
31						31		1
Total	123	47	Total	246	34	Total	50	40	Total	2	4
		1.5			1.2			1.3			0.1

See how the FDI’s have been sitting just in the yellow last month?

Bottom line – we need to start changing gear. I don’t think we need aircraft just yet…lets see how this weekend goes…but the fire behavior will start to change. That is a guarentee. The trigger of dry conditions has already been met. The trigger of fire incidences is fast getting there. The only trigger missing is bad fire weather. Rain will solve the whole problem but the forecast for April is lookingh quite a bit dryer than average…not a good scenario. Remember too that the later the honey season drags the worse it is for us because the rains will start tapering off down to June.

I am monitoring the situation daily and will let you know when its time to pull in further assistance. In the interim please speak to your labour and contractors as a heads up. Get as much awareness out there as possible so that we can try minimise the fire incidences from own own people at least.

Regards

Trevor Wilson

Fire Protection Officer

Zululand Fire Protection Association

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zululand Fire Protection Services

Kwambonambi Ops Center

Tel: 035 5804220

Tel: 035 5804713

Fax: 035 5804704

Fax to Email: 086 500 6235

Cell: 082 5779 337

Web page: http://www.zfps.co.za/

E mail: zfpsops@iafrica.com

"This message may contain information which is private, privileged or confidential and is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity named in the message. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please notify the sender thereof and destroy / delete the message.

Neither the sender nor Zululand Fire Protection Services (including its associated companies) shall incur any liability resulting directly or indirectly from accessing any of the attached files which may contain a virus or the like."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

test

2009-02-24T13:31:00.000+02:00

test

Trevor Wilson

Training

2009-02-12T10:33:00.001+02:00

Test blog