Wildfire

Part of a series on Wildland Firefighting
Main articles
Wildfire  · Bushfire Wildland fire suppression
Agencies
National Interagency Fire Center USFS  · BLM CALFIRE  · CALFIRE Aviation New South Wales Rural Fire Service  · Country Fire Authority, Victoria  · Country Fire Service, South Australia
Tactics & Equipment
Incident Command System Hotshots Controlled burn Firebreak  · Fire trail Fire lookout tower Fire-retardant gel Fire-fighting foam Fire retardant  · MAFFS Helicopter bucket  · Driptorch
Aerial firefighting
Aerial firefighting Helitack  · Smokejumper
Lists
List of wildfires Glossary of wildland fire terms

A wildfire, also known as a wildland fire, forest fire, brush fire, vegetation fire, grass fire, peat fire, bushfire (in Australasia), or hill fire, is an uncontrolled fire often occurring in wildland areas, but also can consume houses and agricultural resources. Common causes are numerous^[1][2] and can include lightning, human carelessness, slash-and-burn farming,^[3] arson, volcanic activity, pyroclastic clouds, and underground coal fire. Heat waves, droughts, and cyclical climate changes such as El Niño can also dramatically increase the risk of wildfires.

The word "wildfire" was once a synonym for Greek fire as well as a word for any furious or destructive conflagration. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest known usages are specifically for lightning-caused conflagrations. The modern usage may have arisen in part from people misunderstanding the expression "spread like wildfire".

Contents 1 Background 2 Designations and terminology 3 Behavior 4 Prevention 5 Wildfire detection 6 Fire suppression 6.1 Fast attack 6.2 Control lines 6.3 Firefighting goals 7 Atmospheric effects 8 Benefits 9 Statistics 10 Fires and the Environment 11 Notable wildfires 12 See also 13 References 14 External links 14.1 Management 14.2 Warning and monitoring 14.3 Wildfire Detection 14.4 Research 14.5 Educational

Background

See also: Fire ecology

Wildfires are common in climates that are sufficiently moist to allow the growth of trees but feature extended dry, hot periods. Such places include the vegetated areas of Australia, the veld in the interior and the fynbos in the Western Cape of South Africa, and the forested areas of the United States and Canada. Fires can be particularly intense during days of strong winds^[4] and periods of drought. Fire prevalance is also high during the summer and autumn months, when fallen branches, leaves, grasses, and scrub dry out and become more flammable.^[5] Global warming may increase the intensity and frequency of droughts in many areas, creating more intense and frequent wildfires.^[6][7]

Wildfires are considered a natural part of the ecosystem of numerous wildlands, where some plants have evolved to survive fires by a variety of strategies, such as fire-resistant seeds and reserve shoots that sprout after a fire. Smoke, charred wood, and heat are common fire cues that stimulate the germination of seeds.^[8] Exposure to smoke from burning plants promotes germination in other types of plants by inducing the production of the orange butenolide.^[9] Plants of the genus eucalypts (e.g. eucalyptus contain flammable oils^[10] that can encourage fire, thought to be a strategy to eliminate competition from less fire-tolerant species.

However, many ecosystems are suffering from too much fire, such as the chaparral in southern California and lower elevation deserts in the American Southwest. The increased fire frequency in these areas has caused the elimination of native plant communities and have replaced them with non native weeds.^[11][12]

These weeds create a positive feedback loop, increasing fire frequency even more.

With extensive urbanization of wildlands, these fires often involve destruction of suburban homes located in the wildland urban interface, a zone of transition between developed areas and undeveloped wildland.

On occasions, wildfires have caused large scale damage to private or public property, destroying many homes and causing deaths, particularly when they have reached urban fringe communities. Wildfires are extremely dangerous, but are often deliberately lit. .

Designations and terminology

In the U.S., there are a number of specific terms that are applicable to such fires. A Wildland fire is "any non-structure fire, that occurs in the wildland", and there are three distinct types of wildland fires:^[13]

• Wildfire is "an unplanned, unwanted wildland fire, including unauthorized human-caused fires, escaped wildland fire use events, escaped prescribed fire projects and all other wildland fires where the objective is to put the fire out."
• Wildland fire use is "the application of the appropriate management response to naturally ignited wildland fires to accomplish specific resource management objectives in predefined designated areas outlined in Fire Management Plans."
• Prescribed fire is "any fire ignited by management actions to meet specific objectives."^[14]

Behavior

See also: Fire#Chemistry

Fires start when a flammable and/or a combustible material with an adequate supply of oxygen or another oxidizer is subjected to enough heat and is able to sustain a chain reaction. This is commonly called the fire tetrahedron. No fire can exist without all of these elements being in place.^[2]

The temperature at which a material may decompose, release flammable gases, and ignite is termed flash point (dry wood is about 300°C).^[2][15] A high moisture content usually prevents ignition and slows propagation, because higher temperatures are required to evaporate the contained water and heat the material to its flash point.^[16] Plants continuously lose water to evaporation, but water loss is usually balanced by water absorbed from the soil, humidity in the air^[17], or rain.^[18] When this balance is not maintained, plants dry out and are therefore more flammable, often a consequence of a long, hot, dry periods.^[18][19][20]

Fires can be categorized by their fuel type as follows:^[19][21]

• Crawling: surface fires that consume low-lying vegetation such as grass, leaf litter, and debris.
• Ladder: fires that consume material between low-level vegetation and tree canopies, such as small trees, vines, and invasive plants.^[22]
• Crown: fires that consume suspended materials at the canopy level. These can spread at incredible paces through the top of a forest and can be extremely dangerous (see Firestorm).

Another type of wildfire is the smouldering fire. It involves the slow combustion of surface fuels without generating flame, spreading slowly and steadily. It can linger for days or weeks after flaming has ceased, resulting in potential large quantities of fuel consumed and becoming a global source of emissions to the atmosphere. It heats the duff and mineral layers, affecting the roots, seeds and plant stems at the ground.

Since 1997, in Kalimantan and East Sumatra, Indonesia, there is a type of continuous smouldering fire on the peat bogs that burn underground for years without any supply of oxygen, probably a result of a riceland creation project that attempted to convert the peat swamp forest to rice paddies, but had the result of draining and drying the peat. The underground fire ignited new forest fire each year during dry season.

Wildfires may spread by jumping or spotting,^[18] as burning materials are carried by wind or firestorm conditions. The burning materials can jump over roads, rivers, or even firebreaks and start distant fires. In Australian bushfires, spot fires have been documented "up to 10 km [approximately 6 miles] ahead of the fire front."^[23]

The Nevada Bureau of Land Management identifies several different wildfire behaviors. For example, extreme fire behavior includes wide rates of spread, prolific crowning and/or spotting, the presence of fire whirls, or a strong convection column. Extreme wildfires behave erratically and unpredictably.

In southern California, under the influence of Santa Ana winds, wildfires can move at tremendous speeds, up to 40 miles (60 km) in a single day, consuming up to 1,000 acres (4 km²) per hour. Dense clouds of burning embers push relentlessly ahead of the flames crossing firebreaks without pause.

The powerful updraft caused by a large wildfire will draw in air from surrounding areas. These self-generated winds can lead to a phenomenon known as a firestorm.

French models of wildfires dictate that a fire's front line will take on the characteristic shape of a pear; the major axis being aligned with the wind. In the case of the fires in southeastern France, the speed of the fire is estimated to be 3% to 8% of the speed of the wind, depending on the conditions (density and type of vegetation, slope). Other models predict an elliptical shape when the ground is flat and the vegetation is homogeneous.

Prevention

For many decades the policy of the United States Forest Service was to suppress all fires. This policy was epitomized by the mascot Smokey Bear and was also the basis of parts of the movie Bambi. The policy began to be questioned in the 1960s, when it was realized that no new Giant Sequoia had been grown in the forests of California, because fire is an essential part of their life cycle. This produced the policy of controlled burns to reduce underbrush. This clears much of the undergrowth through forest and woodland areas, making travel and hunting much easier while reducing the risk of dangerous high intensity fires caused by many years of fuel buildup.

The previous policy of absolute fire suppression in the United States has resulted in the buildup of fuel in some ecosystems such as dry ponderosa pine forests. Fire suppression in southern California has had very little impact over the past century. The amount of land burned in 6 southern California counties has been relatively unchanged. In fact, fire frequency has been increasing dramatically over the past century in lock step with population growth. Urbanization can also result in fuel buildup and devastating fires, such as those in Los Alamos, New Mexico, East Bay Hills, within the California cities of Oakland and Berkeley between October 19 and 22, 1991, all over Colorado in 2002, and throughout southern California in October 2003. Homes designed without considering the fire prone environment in which they are built have been the primary reason for the catastrophic losses experienced in wildfires.

On average, wildfires burn 4.3 million acres (17,000 km²) in the United States annually. In recent years the federal government has spent $1 billion a year on fire suppression. 2002 was a record year for fires with major fires in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Oregon.

The risk of major wildfires can be reduced partly by a reduction or alteration of fuel present. In wild land, reduction can be accomplished by either conducting controlled burns, deliberately setting areas ablaze under less dangerous weather when conditions are less volatile or physical fuel removal. Alteration of fuels, which involves reducing the structure of fuel ladders, can be accomplished by hand crews with chain saws or by large mastication equipment that shreds trees and vegetation to a mulch. Such techniques are best used within the wild land/urban interface where communities connect with wild open space. Prescribed burns away from human habitations, are not particularly effective in preventing large fires. All the large catastrophic fires in the United States have been wind driven events where the amount of fuel (trees, shrubs, etc.) has not been the most important factor in fire spread.

People living in fire prone areas typically take a variety of precautions, including building their homes out of flame resistant materials, reducing the amount of fuel near the home or property (including firebreaks, their own miniature control lines, in effect), and investing in their own firefighting equipment. Rural farming communities are often threatened directly by wildfire. Expanding urban fringes have spread into forested areas, for example in Sydney and Melbourne, and communities have literally built themselves in the middle of highly flammable forests. In Cape Town, the city lies on the fringe of the Table Mountain National Park.

Many states in the United States, Canadian provinces and many countries around the world use Fire lookouts as a means of early detection of forest fires. Some nations still using this system besides the US and Canada include: Australia, Israel, Latvia, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Uruguay.

Wildfire detection

Fast and effective detection is a key factor in wildfire fighting. Recently, there have been significant efforts to create automatic solutions for early wildfire detection. An integrated approach is best, based on a practical combination of different detection systems depending on wildfire risk and the size of the area.

SOLUTIONS	SIZE AREA	RISK LEVEL	DETECTION WITHIN
Aero/satellite	Very large (>250,000 acres)	Low	30 acres (12 ha)
Infrared/smoke scanners	Medium (10,000-250,000 acres)	Medium	3 acres (2.4 ha)
Local sensor network	Small (<10,000 acres)	High	150 sq ft (15 sq m)

A careful GIS data analysis will suggest how to divide the area in sub-categories based on different risk level and human presence (which imply a higher wildfire risk and a need for earlier intervention).

• A small high risk area (thick vegetation, strong human presence or close to critical urban area) could be monitored using a local sensor network.

Although it is a relatively new approach, it seems to be the only solution able to penetrate thick vegetation and guarantee early detection without false alarms, as well as detecting crawling wildfires. The main limitation of this technology is its high cost which at this time limit its application to small areas.

• A larger medium risk area could be monitored by infrared scanning towers.

These have a disadvantage in that they are "blind" to obstacles like thick vegetation, therefore they can miss crawling wildfires for a long time and have still frequent false alarms, but are the best approach to wider areas. Smoke and hot-air-column scanners have the advantage of "looking higher", making them able to locate a wildfire of any size, but do not perform well during strong wind (which is, ironically, the riskiest situation).

• Satellite and aero monitoring can provide a wider view and may be sufficient to monitor very large and low risk areas.

Many studies have been done in this field, some producing interesting results. Limitations for the long distance to satellites and desabiled in geostationary orbits and the short window of observation time for satellites in polar orbits.

Fire suppression

Main article: wildland fire suppression

The vast majority of wildfires are suppressed before they grow out of control. For example, in 2004, US firefighters contained more than 99% of all new wildfires during initial action. That record was achieved despite the volatile conditions that prevailed in much of that year's USA fire season. However, the wildfires that escaped initial actions and grew above 300 acres (1.2 km²) accounted for the bulk of acres burned, and nearly 75% of all suppression expenditures.^[13]

Wildland fire suppression is a unique aspect of firefighting. Most fire-prone areas have large firefighter services to help control bushfires. As well as the water-spraying fire apparatus most commonly used in urban firefighting, bushfire services use a variety of alternative techniques. Typically, forest fire fighting organizations will use large crews of 20 or more people who travel in trucks to the fire. These crews use heavier equipment to construct firebreaks, and are the mainstay of most firefighting efforts. Other personnel are organized into fast attack teams typically consisting of 5–8 people. These fast attack teams are helicoptered into smaller fires or hard to reach areas as a preemptive strike force. They use portable pumps to douse small fires and chainsaws to construct firebreaks or helicopter landing pads if more resources are required. Hand tools are commonly used to construct firebreaks and remove fuels around the perimeter of the fire to halt its spread, including shovels, rakes, and the pulaski, a tool unique to wildland firefighting. In the eastern United States, portable leaf blowers are sometimes used. In the western United States, large fires often become extended campaigns, and temporary fire camps are constructed to provide food, showers, and rest to fire crews. These large fires are often handled by 20 person hand crews, sometimes known as hotshot crews, specially organized to travel to large fires.

Super-absorbent polymer gels are used in in fire-fighting efforts in California. Water is absorbed by the gel and stored in layers of tiny water-filled bubbles. The gel can protect a flammable material for longer time than ordinary water, because it gets boiled by the fire one layer at a time.

Fast attack

Fast attack teams, such as the Boise District BLM Helitack crew, are often considered the elite of firefighting forces, as they sometimes deploy in unusual ways. If the fire is on a particularly steep hill or in a densely wooded area, they may rappel or fast-rope down from helicopters. If the fire is extremely remote, firefighters known as smokejumpers may parachute into site from fixed-wing aircraft. In addition to the aircraft used for deploying ground personnel, firefighting outfits often possess helicopters and water bombers specially equipped for use in aerial firefighting. These aircraft can douse areas that are inaccessible to ground crews and deliver greater quantities of water and/or flame retardant chemicals. Managing all of these various resources over such a large area in often very rugged terrain is extremely challenging, and often the Incident Command System is used. As such, each fire will have a designated Incident Commander who oversees and coordinates all the operations on the fire. This Incident Commander is ultimately responsible for the safety of the firefighters and for the success of firefighting efforts.

Control lines

Large fires are of such a size that no conceivable firefighting service could attempt to douse the whole fire directly, and so alternative techniques are used. In alternative approaches, firefighters attempt to control the fire by controlling the area that it can spread to, by creating "control lines", which are areas that contain no combustible material. These control lines can be produced by physically removing fuel (for instance, with a bulldozer), or by "backfiring", in which small, low-intensity fires are started, using a device such as the driptorch, or pyrotechnic flares known as "fusees", to burn the flammable material in a (hopefully) controlled way. These may then be extinguished by firefighters or, ideally, directed in such a way that they meet the main fire front, at which point both fires run out of flammable material and are thus extinguished.

Unfortunately, such methods can fail in the face of wind shifts causing fires to miss control lines or to jump straight over them (for instance, because a burning tree falls across a line, burning embers are carried by the wind over the line, or burning tumbleweeds cross the line).

Firefighting goals

The actual goals of firefighters vary. Protection of life (those of both the firefighters and "civilians") is given top priority, then private property according to economic and social value and also to its "defendibility" (for example, more effort will be expended on saving a house with a tile roof than one with a wooden-shake roof). In very severe, large fires, this is sometimes the only possible action. Protecting houses is regarded as more important than, say, farming machinery sheds, although firefighters, if possible, try to keep fires off farmland to protect stock and fences (steel fences are destroyed by the passage of fire, as the wire is irreversibly stretched and weakened by it). Preventing the burning of publicly owned forested areas is generally of least priority, and, indeed, it is quite common (in Australia, at least) for firefighters to simply observe a fire burn towards control lines through forest rather than attempt to put it out more quickly; it is, after all, a natural process. On any incident, ensuring the safety of firefighters takes priority over fire suppression. When arriving on a scene a fire crew will establish a safety zone(s), escape routes, and designate lookouts (known by the acronym LCES, for lookouts, communications, escape routes, safety zones). This allows the firefighters to engage a fire with options for a retreat should their current situation become unsafe. In addition all fire suppression activities are based from an "anchor point" (such as lake, rock slide or road). From an anchor point firefighters can work to contain a wild land fire without the fire outflanking them. As a last resort, all wild land firefighters carry a fire shelter. In an unescapable burnover situation the shelter will provide limited protection from radiant and convective heat, as well as superheated air. As such a greater emphasis is placed on safety and preventing entrapment, and is reinforced with a list of 10 fire orders and 18 "watch out situations" for firefighters to be aware of, which warn of potentially dangerous conditions.

In North America, the belief that fire suppression has substantially reduced the average annual area burned is widely held by resource managers and is often thought to be self-evident. However, this belief has been the focus of vocal debate in the scientific literature.

Atmospheric effects

Most of the Earth's weather and air pollution reside in the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere that extends from the surface of the planet to a height of between 8 and 13 kilometers. A severe thunderstorm or pyrocumulonimbus in the area of a large wildfire can have its vertical lift enhanced to boost smoke, soot and other particles as high as the lower stratosphere (Wang, 2003).

Previously, it was thought that most particles in the stratosphere came from volcanoes or were generated by high-flying aircraft. Collection of air samples from the stratosphere in 2003 led to detection of carbon monoxide and other gases related to combustion at a level 30 times higher than can be accounted for by commercial aircraft.

Satellite observation of smoke plumes from wildfires revealed that the plumes could be traced intact for distances exceeding 5,000 kilometers. This observation suggests that the plumes were in the stratosphere above weather conditions that would have brought the plume back to earth.

Wildfires can affect climate and weather and have major impacts on regional and global pollution (Bravo, et al., 2002)).

Atmospheric models suggest that these concentrations of sooty particles could increase absorption of incoming solar radiation during winter months by as much as 15% (Baumgardner, et al., 2003).

The massive forest fire in Indonesia in 1997 is estimated to have released between 0.81 and 2.57 gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, which is between 13-40% of the annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. ^[24]

After the end of a wildfire, houses sometimes experience an ember attack - an onslaught of burning twigs or branches that can ignite a fire in the house.

Wildland fire emissions contain greenhouse gasses and a number of criteria pollutants which can have a substantial impact on human health and welfare (Douglass 2008).

Benefits

Fire is sometimes essential for forest regeneration, or provides tangible benefits for local communities. In other cases it destroys forests and has dire social and economic consequences.

Forest fires are a natural part of ecosystems in many, but not all forest types: in boreal and dry tropical forests for example they are a frequent and expected feature, while in tropical moist forests they would naturally be absent or at least rare enough to play a negligible role in ecology.

Statistics

Every year, the burnt surface represents about:

• France: 211 km², 52,140 acres (211.0 km²), 0.04% of the territory
• Portugal:
  • 1991 : 1,820 km², 449,732 acres (1,820.00 km²), i.e. 2% of the territory
  • 2003 : 4,249 km², 1,050,000 acres (4,200 km²), i.e. 4.6% of the territory; 20 deaths ;
  • 2004 : 1,205 km², 297,836 acres (1,205.30 km²), i.e. 1.3% of the territory
  • 2005 : 2,864 km², 707,668 acres (2,863.83 km²), i.e. 3.1% of the territory; 17 deaths;
  • 2006 : 724 km², 178,904 acres (724.00 km²), i.e. 0.8% of the territory; 10 deaths;
• United States: 17,400 km², 4,300,000 acres (17,400 km²) i.e. 0.18% of the territory
• Indonesia. Sources: before 1997 from Indonesian Environmental Impact Management Agency (BAPEDAL) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) - Collaborative Environmental Project in Indonesia (CEPI). 1997/1998 from Asian Development Bank (ADB). From 1999: Indonesian Ministry of Forestry.
  • 1982 and 1983: 36,000 km² (8.9 million acres)
  • 1987: 492 km² (121,880 acres).
  • 1991: 1,189 km² (293,761 acres).
  • 1994: 1,618 km² (399,812 acres).
  • 1997 and 1998: 97,550 km² (24.1 million acres) - from ADB.
  • 1999: 440.90 km² (108,949 acres).
  • 2000: 82.55 km² ( 20,399 acres).
  • 2001: 143.51 km² ( 35,462 acres).
  • 2002: 366.91 km² ( 90,665 acres).
  • 2003: 37.45 km² ( 9,254 acres).
  • 2004: 139.91 km² ( 34,573 acres).
  • 2005: 133.28 km² ( 32,934 acres).

Fires and the Environment

Forest fires are found in many various places and can be set off by the slightest of sparks. Forest fires mostly happen around areas that are sufficiently moist to allow the growth of trees, but also feature extended dry, hot periods. Fires particularly happen in the summer and autumn. Also during droughts when branches, and leaves, dry out and become highly flammable. What most people don’t know about fires is that a “Fire is sometimes essential for forest regeneration, or provides tangible benefits for local communities. In other cases it destroys forests and has dire social and economic consequences.” [1] Forest fires are a natural part of ecosystems in many cases, but not all of them are. Forest fires can have a dramatic effect on climate change, dramatically increasing carbon released into the atmosphere and ceasing vegetation growth, which inhibits carbon uptake^[25]. Fires become a problem when they burn in the wrong places, or in the right places but at the wrong time. Fires in forests that burn under natural causes become a problem when those forests are used for timber production. So my position is that forest fires can be used for the regeneration of various plant life and can also help restore the ecosystem, but if it is used in the wrong place at the wrong time it can cause major damage and also hurt us economically.

Notable wildfires

Main article: List of wildfires

• One of the largest known wild fires, was the Great Fire of 1910, that burned in Montana and Idaho.

• Kursha-2, a wildfire killed 1,200 in the Soviet Union

• Siege of 1987 Refers to a complex of fires in northern California and southern Oregon that burned a total of about 650,000 acres (2,600 km²). These fires were started by a large lightning storm in late August. The storm started roughly 1600 new fires, most caused by dry lightning. Firefighting efforts continued into October, before the majority of the fires were controlled.

• The Yellowstone National Park Fire of 1988 burned well over 793,880 acres (321,271 ha) before the winter snows put out the flames. (See: Yellowstone fires of 1988)

• The Biscuit Fire burned almost 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) in Oregon and California in 2002.

• McNally Fire Sequoia NF burned roughly 151,000 acres (610 km²) in 2002, and is the largest wildfire recorded in the forest's history.

• The 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park Fire was started by a lightning strike near Rattlesnake Island in Okanagan Mountain Park in British Columbia, Canada, during one of the driest summers in the past decade. The final size of the firestorm was over 250 square kilometres (61,776 acres). 60 fire departments, 1,400 armed forces troops and 1,000 forest fire fighters took part in controlling the fire, but were largely helpless in stopping the disaster.

• The January 1939 Black Friday fires. Across the Australian state of Victoria, almost 20,000 km² (4,942,000 acres, 2,000,000 ha) of land were burnt, 71 people died, several towns were entirely destroyed. The Stretton Royal Commission that resulted from it led to major changes in fire and forest management in Australia.

• The February 1967 Tasmanian fires. Fuelled by a severe drought, 110 fires burnt out over 617,763 acres (2,500.00 km²) in the Australian state of Tasmania in around 5 hours. The fires killed 62 people and destroyed 1,400 homes and other buildings. Seven thousand people were left homeless. The fire encircled the state capital Hobart cutting communications and burnt to within 8 km (4.9 mi) of the city centre.

• The February 1983 Ash Wednesday fires. Extreme weather and severe drought conditions combined to create one of Australia’s worst fire days in a century. In 12 hours on February 16 in the states of Victoria and South Australia 75 people died, including 17 firefighters. Over 2,545 homes were lost along with heavy loss of farms and livestock. Nearly 1,284,000 acres (5,196 km²) were burnt throughout the 1982/83 fire season. Many of the fatalities were caused by a rapid change in the speed and direction of the firefront and poor evacuation procedures.

• 1997 and 1998 - Colossal, unprecedented forest fires in Kalimantan and East Sumatra, Indonesia. 97,000 km2 (24.1 million acres) of rainforest were destroyed, more than 2.6 Gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide was released to the atmosphere. The underground smouldering fire on the peat bogs continue to burn and ignite new forest fire each year during dry season. Every year, forest are burned by farmers (slash-and-burn techniques are used by between 200 and 500 million people worldwide)^[26], plantation owners and continuous underground fire (since 1997).

• The 2003 Canberra bushfires infringed on the Australian capital itself. A firestorm raced through Canberra suburbs on January 18, 2003 and damaged or destroyed 431 homes.

• In 2004, approximately 6,500,000 acres (26,300 km²) burned in Alaska, in the state's largest recorded fire season. Over 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) burned in the Boundary Fire north of Fairbanks.

• The Milford Flat Fire which burned in 2007 in Utah is statistically the largest fire burning in Utah's history. At the time, Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. stated that it is the biggest fire burning in the world. This fire burned 363,052 acres (1,469.22 km²) before it was fully contained.

• The 2007 Greek fires were some of the deadliest in world history, killing at least 64 people in Peloponnese and Evia.

• The Zaca Fire burned Los Padres NF, CA. It burned 240,207 acres (972.08 km²). It is the 2nd largest recorded fire in California.

• The 2007 Southern California wildfires, burning an estimated 600,000 acres (2,400 km²) of land (in the San Diego and Malibu areas), with almost 900,000 people evacuated from the area.

• The Evans Road Wildfire of June 2008 in Eastern North Carolina has so far burned nearly 34,000 acres (140 km²).Virginia.

• The Summer 2008 California wildfires were estimated to have burned nearly 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km²), mostly in Northern California. There were 2,096 wildfires. Fifteen lives and 511 structures were lost.

See also

• Aerial firefighting
• Controlled burn
• Defensible space
• Deforestation
• Fire ecology
• Fire lookout tower
• Forestry
• Floods after wildfires (i.e. after Greek 2007 wildfires)
• Glossary of wildland fire terms
• International Association of Wildland Fire
• Keetch-Byram Drought Index
• List of forest fires
• Slash-and-burn farming
• Success of fire suppression in northern forests
• Wildland Firefighter Foundation
• Wildfire modeling

References

• Baumgardner, D., et al. 2003. Warming of the Arctic lower stratosphere by light absorbing particle. American Geophysical Union fall meeting. Dec. 8-12. San Francisco.
• Billing, P., 1983. Otways Fire No. 22 - 1982/83 Aspects of fire behaviour, Fire Research Branch Report No. 20. Dept. of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria, Australia. pp. 5-6, (PDF - 1.8 Mb). [2]
• Bridge, S.R.J, K. Miyanishi and E.A. Johnson. 2005. A Critical Evaluation of Fire Suppression Effects in the Boreal Forest of Ontario. Forest Science 51:41-50.
• Bravo, A. H., E. R. Sosa, A. P. Sánchez, P. M. Jaimes and R. M. I. Saavedra. 2002. Impact of wildfires on the air quality of Mexico City, 1992–1999. Environmental Pollution, 117(2: 243-253.
• Douglass, R. 2008. Quantification of the health impacts associated with fine particulate matter due to wildfires. M.S. Thesis. Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences of Duke University. 45p.
• Fromm, M., et al. 2003. Stratospheric smoke down under: Injection from Australian fires/convection in January 2003. American Geophysical Union fall meeting. Dec. 8-12. San Francisco.
• Halsey, R.W. 2008. Fire, Chaparral, and Survival in Southern California. Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA. 323 p.
• Johnson, E.A. and Miyanishi K. (Eds.) 2001. Forest Fires - Behavior and Ecological Effects. Academic Press, San Diego.
• Johnson, E.A., K. Miyanishi, and S.R.J. Bridge. 2001. Wildfire regime in the boreal forest and the idea of suppression and fuel buildup. Conserv. Biol. 15:1554-1557.
• Keeley, J.E. 1995. "Future of California floristics and systematics: wildfire threats to the California flora". Madrono 42: 175-179.
• Keeley, J.E. and C.J. Fotheringham. 1997. "Trace gas emission in smoke-induced germination". Science 276: 1248-1250.
• Li, C. 2000. Fire regimes and their simulation with reference to Ontario. P. 115-140 in Ecology of a managed terrestrial landscape: patterns and processes of forest landscapes in Ontario, Perera, A.H., D.L. Euler, and I.D. Thompson (eds.). UBC Press, Vancouver, BC.
• Makarim, Nabiel, et al. BAPEDAL and CIDA-CEPI. 1998. Assessment of 1997 Land and Forest Fires in Indonesia: National Coordination. From "International Forest Fire News", #18, page 4-12, January 1998.
• Martell, D.L. 1994. The impact of fire on timber supply in Ontario. For. Chron. 70:164-173.
• Martell, D.L. 1996. Old-growth, disturbance, and ecosystem management: commentary. Can. J. Bot. 74:509-510.
• Miyanishi, K., and E.A. Johnson. 2001. A re-examination of the effects of fire suppression in the boreal forest. Can. J. For. Res. 31:1462-1466.
• Miyanishi, K., S.R.J. Bridge, AND E.A. Johnson. 2002. Wildfire regime in the boreal forest. Conserv. Biol. 16:1177-1178.
• Shea, Neil: "Under fire". National Geographic Magazine July 2008 link
• Pyne, S.J. et al. 1996. Introduction to Wildland Fire. Wiley, New York.
• Stocks, B.J. 1991. The extent and impact of forest fires in northern circumpolar countries. P. 197-202 in Global biomass burning: atmospheric, climatic and biospheric implications, Levine, J.S. (ed.). MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
• Wang, P.K. 2003. The physical mechanism of injecting biomass burning materials into the stratosphere during fire-induced thunderstorms. American Geophysical Union fall meeting. Dec. 8-12. San Francisco.
• Ward, P.C., and W. Mawdsley. 2000. Fire management in the boreal forests of Canada. P. 274-288 In Fire, climate change, and carbon cycling in the boreal forest, Kasischke, E.S., and B.J. Stocks (eds.). Springer, New York, NY.
• Ward, P.C., and A.G. Tithecott. 1993. The impact of fire management on the boreal landscape of Ontario. Aviation, Flood and Fire Management Branch Publication No. 305. Ont. Min. Nat. Res., Queens Printer for Ontario, Toronto, ON.
• Ward, P. C., Tithecott, A. G., & Wotton, B. M. 2001. Reply—a re-examination of the effects of fire suppression in the boreal forest. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 31(8), 1467.
• Weber, M.G., and B.J. Stocks. 1998. Forest fires in the boreal forests of Canada. P. 215-233 in Large forest fires, Moreno, J.M. (ed.). Backhuys Publishers, Leiden.
• Zedler, P.H. 1995. Fire frequency in southern California shrublands: biological effects and management options, pp. 101-112 in J.E. Keeley and T. Scott (eds.), Brushfires in California wildlands: ecology and resource management. International Association of Wildland Fire, Fairfield, Wash.

External links

Management

USA Fire Agencies

• Bureau of Land Management
• Missoula Fire Lab
• National Interagency Fire Center
• US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service
• National Wildfire Coordinating Group

Canadian Forest Fire Management Agencies

Forest fire management is under provincial/territorial jurisdiction (with the exception of the Yukon Territory) with operational fire-control services and coordination of resource-sharing provided by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Parks Canada is responsible for forest fire management in our National Parks. Specific information on fire conditions can be obtained from the appropriate agency listed below. CIFFC is also is the principal source for the statistics used in preparing the weekly National Forest Fire Situation Report. ^[1]

• CIFFC - Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre
• Alberta
• British Columbia
• Manitoba
• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland and Labrador
• Northwest Territories
• Nova Scotia
• Ontario
• Parks Canada
• Prince Edward Island
• Quebec - SOPFEU (Société de protection des forêts contre le feu)
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon Territory

Warning and monitoring

• CalFireNews.com - California / World Wildfire News and Photos
• FireFightingNews.com - Wildfire News and Photos
• Current Wildland Fire Information in the United States
• Weekly Forest Fire Situation Report - Canadian Forest Service
• The British Columbia Ministry of Forests-Protection Branch
• Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC)
• European Forest Fire Information System
• GeoMAC Wildfire information and internet map viewer of current wildfires in the United States
• Locations of large fires in the US and Canada based upon MODIS satellite imagery
• The 10 standard fire orders and 18 watch out situations
• Volunteer Wildfire Services, Cape Town, South Africa
• BWCA Fire Restrictions, Fire Danger, and Forest Fire Updates

Wildfire Detection

• NASA Wildfire Research

Research

• Forest Fire Lookout Association
• The International Journal of Wildland Fire
• The International Association of Wildland Fire
• Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team
• FEMA report on the East Bay Hills Fire
• Interesting Forest Fire Policy
• SIADEX: A decision support system for fighting forest fires in Andalusia
• Fire in the East, Fire in the West An overview of conditions and agents of wildfire in different U.S. ecosystems
• French National Centre for Scientific Research - University of Corsica An international platform for the experimental investigations of free wildland fires at field scale
• Peuch, Eric "Firefighting Safety in France", Eighth International Wildland Fire Summit, April 26-26, 2005
• Fire and Haze in Southeast Asia
• CBC Digital Archives - Fighting Forest Fires
• US Forest Service Research Portal
• Canberra Fires
• Australian Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre
• eWater Cooperative Research Centre Effects of Bushfire on Catchments
• National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - Fighting Wildfires
• Social & Economic Costs of Wildfires from "NOAA Socioeconomics" website initiative
• Fire Management Systems Labotary

Educational

• OnEarth Magazine » Our Trial By Fire
• Wildfire photographs
• Fire and Conservation, The Nature Conservancy's Global Fire Initiative
• The California Chaparral Institute
• Wildfire Training and Fatality Investigations
• Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
• Tree Planting to recover from fires
• Wildland Firefighter Foundation
• Wildfire Communications Company
• How Wildfires Work on HowStuffWorks.com