Global Wildfire Peril Lead @GallagherRe_ Wildfire modeling and atmospheric science Tennis enthusiast and former 'pretty decent' junior player
Boston, MA
Joined December 2021
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Phil Cunningham retweeted
Everybody wins when the smart and rational adults have the microphone when it comes to wildfire.
Phil Cunningham retweeted
It’s movie night. Go buy the #1 rated firefighter film of all time, our independent documentary “Hotshot”. It tells the *real* story of these California wildfires in a way Gavin and the media never do. Your support means the world to me.
Phil Cunningham retweeted
🔥The more Paladin grew in maturity, the more we saw clarity around user problem focus. Our product design followed that signal in turn.
🧐When you start working on a problem, you see broadly something that isn’t working. However, a company arises when you keep asking why until you find something small enough you can build to solve that fundamental bottleneck.
📝For us, it’s wildfire incident communication and coordination and fundamentally realizing that wildfire response has been fully reactionary until we built Paladin.
🚀In not so many words, Paladin isn’t in the market of solving wildfire. We’re in the market of being the first to enable firefighters to fight wildfires proactively, so THEY can solve the wildfire crisis.
@paladinworks #knowwildfire #paladin #firetech #wildfire
Phil Cunningham retweeted
I stole a line from @Hotshot_Movie.
What can burn will burn.
Arsonists matter. Put them in jail. But fuels are the only thing we can control that drive the outcome. Fix the gardens. Fix the houses. Manage fuels within ember cast of the interface.
nytimes.com/2025/10/15/opini…?
Phil Cunningham retweeted
We wanted FedFire. We got a memo. It’s just a grocery list of buzzwords and timelines for the next set of memos. Until a Chief is appointed, it’s mostly irrelevant, because that Chief will establish the cultural underpinning beyond the memos. We can say “streamline” and “efficiency” til we’re blue in the face. It means nothing until we have a meat eater in charge to define the agency’s culture.
The one good news is soil scientists are banned from being chief. Operators only. If it’s Bobby Garcia, FedFire will slap. Brian Fennessey would be another outstanding leader.
That leadership is really all that matters, so until we see that appointment, it’s just lofty words on a memo, and we’ve seen that before.
Phil Cunningham retweeted
Volumetric radar rendering of today's plume development from the #GarnetFire.
Phil Cunningham retweeted
Yep! As usual, John is correct. I actually stopped myself from posting this yesterday, because I don't like to say these things when people are losing their homes...but...
Chinese Camp was not ready to receive wildfire. See for yourself.
@Hotshot_Movie Have you beem able to look in on the TCU complex Lost most od Chinese camp Had they cleaned up ladder fuels & had a spring time burn of the grass we might have had a chance. No 💪 when your just "first responders" asking for Laws to enforce fire safety.
Phil Cunningham retweeted
This is what a reckoning with 100 years of fire exclusion looks like. #GarnetFire
Phil Cunningham retweeted
Spot on.
Here in Boulder the Chinook winds are actually less severe now than they were 50 years ago. Gusts of 120 mph were relatively common, now 100 mph is rare. Even the Marshal Fire (rare 112 mph in 2021) winds were weaker. Source: 2025 NCAR study conducted at the Mesa Lab.
Phil Cunningham retweeted
The #GarnetFire has pushed halfway through the Teakettle Experimental Forest, with intense heat. This will provide very valuable research data for wildfires. It's had a good run, 85+ years of producing data, and now it's getting a real-world test on a ripping fire.
Remember, only half of the parcels in their testing mosaic have ever seen fire. 1/6th of the parcels have ZERO treatment, whatsoever...those are the "control" parcels. The others have had manual understory thinning, manual overstory thinning, then RX fire only, understory thinning + RX fire, and overstory thinning + RX fire. Each of these 6 treatment types have been replicated in triplicate, in a scattered mosaic.
One thing that we know is that thinning treatments – alone – can increase fire severity because of slash. But obviously, the fuel loading in the control parcels will be astronomical. Since the fire pushed out of the 2015 Rough Fire scar a few days ago, this fire has been burning in an area that hasn't seen a significant wildfire in over a century, hence the big plumes.
RT @wildland_zko: About 1,000 acres of the 3,000 acre Teakettle Experimental Forest (green outline) burned in the Garnet Fire, east of Fres…
Phil Cunningham retweeted
In fire science, there are many ways to describe a fire: by temperature, size, damage or probability. But fire engineers prefer the heat release rate (HRR) curve. It shows how much thermal power a fire emits over time, and it is where fire safety design begins: the design fire.
ALT The heat release rate (HRR) evolution that is estimated based on the locations of leading and trailing edges of the fire and different fire growth rates for comparison. The shaded area represents uncertainty associated with assumed combustion efficiency (0.6-0.75), wood density (426-466 kg/m 3 ), and heat of combustion (18.94 ± 0.14 MJ/kg). From http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-021-01162-6
Phil Cunningham retweeted
Episode 4 of our 'Danger in Plain Sight' video series is now live!
In this episode, we travel to Pacific Palisades to look at how the January 2025 fire rampaged through this city, and talk about the folly of rebuilding the exact same urban footprint, in direct antagonism to the annual Santa Ana winds, which are funneled directly into the city by east-west-trending canyons in the hills above.
Episodes 1-4 are available, here:
the-lookout.org/danger-in-pl…
Phil Cunningham retweeted
I got a chance to talk with Sheryl Drinkwater, a wildfire-savvy Berkeley architect. We looked at new wildfire-related codes for portions of the Berkeley Hills, and talked about the inherent flammability of the "classic California home".
the-lookout.org/2025/08/20/s…
Phil Cunningham retweeted
A lot of the new acreage is from tactical firing operations that are doing an excellent job of sealing up the north end of the fire. Weather is getting crappy though…90-100% probability of ignition (yikes) single digit RH in upper elevations. Could see some plumes today…#GiffordFire
#GiffordFire Morning Quick Facts
August 7, 2025
Size: 96, 106 acres
Containment: 15%
Personnel assigned: 2,988
🔗inciweb.wildfire.gov/inciden…
Phil Cunningham retweeted
My POV. Couple of times it got hot! #rosafire #fireseason
Phil Cunningham retweeted
I agree with Hotshot Movie, Phil, and Elizabeth Burns. The key argument is the need for proactive planning to establish firebreaks and conduct prescribed burns, especially in areas known for heavy fuel loads, dry conditions, and strong winds near communities.
