Editor’s note: Kari Hines, Firewise Coordinator and Public Information Officer for Texas A&M Forest Service, has 10 years experience responding to wildfires in Central Texas and beyond. In this blog, Kari recounts the initial understanding of the Parmer Lane Fire near Austin, Texas, and how the impacts were less severe than anticipated for a wildfire so near to a wildland urban interface (WUI) community. Texas A&M Forest Service has also completed a detailed StoryMap as a case study for the Parmer Lane Fire. All images in this blog post are credited to the StoryMap.
When the Parmer Lane Fire started on August 8, 2023, just outside of Austin, Texas, we knew going in that there were already structures lost, it was just a question of how many.
As a state agency, our responders must wait to engage with a wildfire until we’re requested by local officials. As a state Public Information Officer living and working in the greater Austin area, I was already following the fire before that assistance request was made. When a wildfire starts in a busy suburban area and an apartment building is reported to be on fire less than 30 miles away from downtown Austin, you better believe social media was full of pictures, videos, and firsthand accounts of the event.
Initial Understanding of the Parmer Lane Fire’s Scope
Initial news reports relayed little: that an apartment building was on fire; the complex, a nearby neighborhood, and some commercial spaces were all under evacuation; the fire was causing major traffic issues during evening commute through Cedar Park… and that’s about it. Even by the time I got on scene a few hours later, we weren’t sure if this incident was a structure fire that burned into the undeveloped lot, or if a wildfire had slammed into the surrounding highly developed area.
Texas A&M Forest Service bulldozers didn’t get on scene until after dark, so initial progress around the fire was slow. Early estimates for fire size were close to 100 acres. Nearly everyone on scene thought that the fire must have burned through a combination of private land and a public greenbelt to move around to the other side of the apartment complex and neighborhood.
The following morning revealed that the Parmer Lane Fire was barely 35 acres and had hopped over three rows of homes. Pictures from a local US Fish & Wildlife Service wildland firefighter and overhead drone footage from the Cedar Park Office of Emergency Management showed what the predictive services data would support: that near record low Energy Release Component numbers (ERC) in Ashe juniper, extreme drought, and gusty winds spread a roadside start into a full consumption wildfire within a quarter hour of the initial 9-1-1 call. The resulting wildfire covered the neighborhoods and apartment complex with embers, resulting in multiple attic fires in apartment units and also showering firebrands into the townhomes for hours after ignition.
A Welcomed Surprise: Less Structure Damage Than Expected
In a state with no mandatory wildfire building or landscaping codes, I was fully expecting there to be extensive fire damage to multiple structures. I expected holdover attic fires to pop up on day two of the fire. But there wasn’t. Outside of the full loss of the apartment building and a handful of attic fires in other apartment units that were extinguished the first night, the worst fire damage was a few burned landscaping plants and mulch that needed replacing.
I wanted to know why the resulting damage wasn’t more significant. I enlisted a few peers to investigate the wildfire timeline, examine the damage, and determine what neighborhood features affected the overall fire outcome. The neighborhood was repopulated less than a day after the initial ignition, with residents immediately working to clear the damaged landscaping.
Capturing the Parmer Lane Fire in StoryMap Form
We admit we are not professional researchers, but we hope you find the Parmer Lane Fire StoryMap we developed insightful and useful. Our hope is for this to be another tool showing the importance of preparing residents and local officials for wildfire, especially in occluded wildland urban interface where the full extent of wildfire risks is often unknown. Interested readers can access an additional, more technical StoryMap with scientific details and environmental information here.
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