Hollis Birthday Fire
The Hollis Birthday Fire burned 2,363 acres in Louisiana, in 2009. It was discovered on August 11, 2009, and contained on August 17, 2009. The cause was recorded as natural.
- Size
- 2,363 acres
- Discovered
- August 11, 2009
- Contained
- August 17, 2009
- Cause
- Natural
Map
The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 2,158 acres. Point of origin as reported, 29.894, -93.467.
The record
- Reported final size
- 2,363 acres
- Burned area mapped by MTBS
- 2,158 acres
- Discovered
- August 11, 2009, 2:00 p.m. local time
- Contained
- August 17, 2009, 10:00 a.m. local time
- Cause
- Natural
- State
- Louisiana
- Land ownership at origin
- Fish and Wildlife Service
- Reporting unit
- Sabine National Wildlife Refuge
- Agency
- Fish and Wildlife Service
- Incident type
- Wildfire
- MTBS fire identifier
- LA2989309347020090811
- MTBS assessment
- Initial (SS)
- Fire occurrence record
- FWS-2009LASBRE4Y0
The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.
From the incident teams’ reports
The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 4, from August 12, 2009 to August 17, 2009. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.
- Most personnel assigned
- 7 on August 12, 2009
- Most aircraft assigned
- 1
- Cost reported by the teams
- $2,000, in 2009 dollars
- Cause on the reports
- Lightning or other natural
- Primary fuel model reported
- Tall Grass (2.5 feet)
- Suppression strategy reported
- Confine
Acres reported by day
The largest rise between two days’ reports was 1,163 acres, on August 13, 2009.
Reported acres by day, as a table
| Day | Acres | Change from the day before |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 12, 2009 | 1,200 | |
| Aug 13, 2009 | 2,363 | +1,163 |
| Aug 14, 2009 | 2,363 | 0 |
| Aug 17, 2009 | 2,363 |
Other large fires in Louisiana in 20097
| Fire | Acres | Start | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dog House Fire | 6,365 | Jul 18, 2009 | Natural |
| Targa Fire | 3,440 | Mar 2, 2009 | |
| Back Ridge East Fire | 3,253 | Jul 16, 2009 | Natural |
| Slidell Airport Fire | 1,922 | Mar 7, 2009 | |
| Cameron Meadows Fire | 1,523 | Mar 7, 2009 | |
| Unnamed Fire | 1,377 | Mar 8, 2009 | |
| Government Pond Fire | 550 | Jan 20, 2009 | Human |
Nearby
Sources
Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.