Reference Map
Thematic Map:
School Districts Closed on September 3
The 2009 Los Angeles County Station Fire was one of the biggest fires that have ever occurred around the area. It started on August 26 and was fully contained on October 16. In the end, the Station Fire decimated over 250 square miles of the San Gabriel Mountains, which are located north of Pasadena and Burbank, around the geographic center of LA County. From a La Canada Flintridge September 1 report, there were no strong winds around the city, which most likely helped the fire to not become as severe and wild as it could have been. The report continued on to say that the Station Fire did move past the city along a northward direction toward Mt. Wilson and the city of Acton. It pushed in every direction except south. As one can see in the maps above, the fire exponentially grew toward the north within a span of 5 days. In one night, it doubled in size to 85,000 acres. The fire's severity is evident in the fact that it moved into areas of the forest that had no history of any fire. Besides La Canada Flintridge and Acton, some of the other surrounding foothill communities that were threatened were Pasadena and Glendale.
The theme of the second map above is school districts. I hypothesized that because of the fire's severity, many school districts in the county closed their schools in an effort to shield their students from potential fire outbreaks and the worsening air quality. My hypothesis was true to a certain extent. As I will explain later, many schools around the area were affected by the fire. Since the Station Fire occurred during the annual season of going back to school, certain school districts did postpone some of their starting dates of the school year. However, the fire did not affect the importance of education for long. The maps above show the perimeters of the fire each day from August 29 to September 2 (excluding August 31). One would believe that many school districts would be closed for a long time due to the monstrous size of the fire, thus prolonging the summer vacation of many students who attended the schools around the area. LA County released a Station Fire update on September 3, stating, among other important pieces of information, that most school districts within close proximity of the fire had all of their schools open.
On August 30, 2009, it was reported that the La Canada Unified School District postponed the opening of all 5 of their schools. The district planned to start the new school year on September 1. In the same report, the Glendale Unified School District also postponed the original start date of the school year, which was August 31. However, in the aforementioned LA County Station Fire update on September 3, not even a quarter of the school districts in the county had school closures. By that date, all schools of the La Canada and Glendale Unified School Districts were open. On the contrary, schools in the Acton-Agua Dulce and Pasadena Unified School Districts, as well as schools in the LA Unified School District that were in the impacted area, postponed their school year by a few days. Even though the Station Fire was severe, it is remarkable that many of the school districts that were close to the fire did not suffer any loss of educational time. In the thematic map above, the districts that were closed on September 3 are highlighted in dark blue. With those three districts combined, the number of schools affected by the closures seems to be just below half of all the schools that were in the Station Fire-related school districts. From this map observation, it can be logically concluded that close fire proximity was the main reason for school closure.
According to the thematic map, the school districts that were affected by closures were either north or south of the fire (or even in the area of the fire). The map also shows the presence of multiple schools that were close to the fire. Why were they not closed? The reasoning behind that could be the fact that the Station Fire grew in a northward direction for the most part. School district officials to the west and southwest of the fire were undoubtedly precautionary, but they probably did not see the growth of the fire as a major threat to the start of the their school year. On September 3, the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District, which is the district north of the fire, as represented in the thematic map, declared that its schools would not be session until September 8. While other decision-making factors are not thoroughly explained in this report, the district probably gathered information from official sources in an attempt to set a new date for the beginning of the school year. It also seems that the northern LA county school districts on September 3 did not see the fire as an ongoing and pervasive threat - otherwise, all of them would have closed their schools due to the fact that the fire expanded northward. From this, it can be logically concluded that the fire was being dealt with rigorously, at least on September 3.
As mentioned previously mentioned, the fire grew northward for the most part. With respect to a few miles south of the Station Fire, there were not many school districts that were threatened and closed. The fire mainly wreaked havoc on the San Gabriel Mountains. If the fire did have a great inclination to go south, that probably would have been quickly resolved by rigorous firefighting; trees being burned by fire is better than property being burned. It is obvious to note that many people lived south of fire. My hypothesis speculated that many school districts, even those south of the fire, were closed, despite their far distance away from the Station Fire, because of the high levels of dust created by the blaze. Air quality obviously has a harmful impact on physical education, school sports, and going to class in general. My hypothesis was wrong. As I have also mentioned earlier, fire proximity was the main reason for school closure. In other words, being relatively close to the fire, not horrible air quality, justified the postponing of the new school year. This fire is one event that the people of LA County will never forget. While it was not a major humanitarian crises or anything of that kind, Mother Nature did disrupt the status quo for a while. While school districts were affected by the Station Fire, they would eventually be back to normal in a few days. School districts were not heavily impacted by the fire's rage. However, with respect to its impact on Southern California environmental issues, the fire definitely did its work. That is another topic to discuss at a later time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pringle, Paul. “L.A. County Fire Doubles in Size; More Homes Destroyed; Mt. Wilson Threatened.”LA Times. LA Times, 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 June 2012. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/la-county-fire-doubles-in-size-more-homes-list-mt-wilson-threatened.html>.
“Station Fire.” InciWeb. InciWeb, 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 14 June 2012. <http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/>.
“'Station Fire' Update.” La Canada Flintridge. La Cañada Flintridge Chamber of Commerce, 1 Sep. 2009. Web. 14 June 2012. <http://www.lacanadaflintridge.com/docfiles/city/emrg_na_mis_090901_050355.pdf>.
“Station Fire Update.” LASD Blog. County of Los Angeles, 3 Sep. 2009. Web. 14 June 2012. <http://www.lasdblog.org/Pressrelease/PR_Folder/SFUpdateTH-01.pdf>.
William-Ross, Lindsay. “Station Fire Update: Evacuations, School Closures.” laist. laist, 30 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 June 2012. <http://laist.com/2009/08/30/station_fire_update.php>.
