Eli5: How do firefighters discover the causes of huge bushfires?

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Perhaps sometimes it’s obvious but I mean a huge bushfire and they find out someone dropped a lit cigarette or something. Fires have kinda been known to make literal ash of things yet somehow not so good at destroying its own evidence

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A fire would destroy a cigarette that started it if it was dropped on top of a large pile of wood and it got stuck there and ignited the wood.

But that is not how a typical forest fire looks, there is not large piles of wood that burn for a long time. Drop the cigarette of a bit of dry grass that is ignited. It will not burn a lot directly but stat to spread relatively slowly. It can get larger over time and move quickly with the wind. It is when the fire gets large it gets very hot, but when it starts the temperature is a lot lower.

There is also not a large amount of fuel in the same location like if you pile up wood so it will not burn for that long time. If it burns for a long time where it actually starts the reason will be it is really wet material so it will smolder and not get that hot. When the fuel at the ignition point is gone it will not burn there so the large hot fire will not burn there.

Look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9jNUR8IcB4 for an example of the start of a fire on grass. The film is clearly sped up. It is not that surprising that a cigarette butt survives the inula part of the wire when it is small and not very hot. Ciragett filters do not burn without an external heat source so I would be very surprised if it is would be destroyed.

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