Dr. Joost de Gouw and his plan to quantify the impacts of the Marshall Fire
Credit to Malachi Brooks, Unsplash
The Marshall Fire started on December 30th, 2021, and burned for days impacting hundreds of buildings and homes across the Boulder County area. The fire started outside of Boulder and burned thousands of acres reaching as far as residential areas of Superior and Louisville. Residents were forced out of their homes and told to evacuate to a safe area, and many had to leave behind belongings and cherished items without any confirmation of ever seeing them again. Those abandoned homes were analyzed by researchers from CU Boulder, like Dr. Joost de Gouw, to determine the impacts the fires had on air quality. His research has helped illustrate the detrimental impacts on the environment that come because of houses burning.
The toxins released during a house fire are more numerous than the toxins released during forest fires, according to de Gouw. "The fires were more detrimental to the environment than a traditional forest fire due to the different toxins released by the burnt cars, furniture, and other household items...carbon is the biggest byproduct of forest fires, but with house fires there are many more toxins released into the air," he continued.
Many items and other charred remains were blown around by the wind into homes that were not directly in the path of the fire. As a result, a mixture of the fire's smoke, soot, and blown ash made its way into the homes of people who were miles away from the areas set aflame. Many of the unburned homes were exposed to heavy smoke and dangerous levels of particulate matter due to the direction the wind was blowing, said de Gouw when speaking of the impact of the fire hours after it has started.
He conducted a study on the impacts of the fire in the areas that were both minimally impacted by the fires besides the presence of smoke and soot and in areas heavily burned by the fires in both Superior and Louisville. Dr. de Gouw collected data from the burned areas anywhere from 10-35 days after the fire was controlled enough to enter the impacted areas. He conducted this study next to Old Town Superior on January 8th and 9th, which was nearly a week after the first reports of the fire had surfaced. Then, nearly a month later, on February 7th and 8th, the house was aerated and cleaned of contaminants and particulate matter, de Gouw said.
A similar study of the impacted area(s) from de Gouw included installing sensor packages fitted with activated carbon filters, a new technology used to measure particulate (VOC) levels. The devices were fitted in ten different homes that were impacted by the fire. After taking some time to allow the sensors to collect information it was detected that the indoor concentration of VOCs had increased dramatically from the fires. Also, de Gouw noted that VOC mitigation efforts were not helping to reduce the VOC content in the houses. The fires appeared to be too destructive to the air quality to make any substantial difference with the available technology.
Overall, Dr. Joost de Gouw has helped paint a picture of the impact the Marshall Fire had on the environment and the air quality in homes for residents of Boulder, Superior, Louisville, and surrounding areas. Thanks to financial support from CIRES, and NSF (National Science Foundation) RAPID, de Gouw was able to illustrate the impact fires have on communities, like Boulder County, and even more so the impact on the Earth and atmosphere.
Sources:
Dr. de Gouw, Joost. CU Boulder.
Photo, Unsplash, Credit to Malachi Brooks
