Is there a way we can prevent them from occurring in the first place, or is it inevitable during the summer months?
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I come from Northern California, the true North. We get forest fires every year, the big ones. In the 35 years I lived there, the majority of these fires started during the late summer when it’s especially dry, and there are dry thunder storms. Lightning strikes in the mountains tend to start the majority of these.
Now there have been man made wild fires, true, but these aren’t as common, nor tend to produce the large complex fires you see on the news. Reason being that most man made fires start from camp fires, these types of fires are more accessible and campgrounds tend to be designed with natural fire breaks.
In the 1980s, a devastating forest fire called the fountain fire started close to the highway, some road brush caught on fire, either a discarded cigarette or car exhaust started that one. But these are more an exception.
To answer your other question, what makes them so hard to put out, it’s the location of the fire that makes it hard. These mountains are dozens of miles away from any sort of road, the ones that make it to the small mountain towns usually are huge by time they get there, sort of like a flaming avalanche that picks up speed and size as it burns its way from a rural location to one that is inhabited.
To put a wild fire out requires man power. Unlike a fire in town where you have water infrastructure available and large fire fighting trucks with teams of professionals who can isolate and effectively put a fire our, the mountains lack the water and the ability for the equipment to easily get to the location
This requires fire teams to scout trails, bring in bulldozers, creat emergency fire trails, and hike fire fighters into the mountains with gear to begin fighting the fire
But how do you fight a wild fire? Unlike a fire in tow where natural containment like fire walls, streets, and distance between homes exist, the mountains have densely packed vegetation that grows rapidly during the spring and dries out during the summer.
Also, many national parks are poorly maintained, with decades of fire prevention efforts that kept fires that would have happened naturally, burning out forest debris, and thinning out foliage creating natural fire breaks, forests have been allowed to grow without much planning for fire issues.
Some forestry departments will let wild fires in the most rural areas burn freely and only keep an eye on them, this generally is the right approach
Others have the approach of picking and choosing select locations to medicate. Spot burn or controlled burns are a bandaid but are better than nothing.
Why can’t we just run a bunch of helicopters up there and dowse the flames? Too expensive/ inneffective/ destructive to the environment. We put wild fires out by containing them and letting them burn them selves out.
Bulldozers cut through the mountain creating a burn line, a strip of land void of foliage. Usually with a mound known as a burn on one or both sides this fire line will vary in width depending on wind conditions and speed of the flame.
Water drops from above are used more to steer the path of the fire in effect assisting with the containment. Back fires may be lit to keep the fire from spreading beyond a certain point. If the terrain warrents a back fire, the wind encourages it, and there’s proper fuel to burn the back fire, this can be an effective containment strategy. A forest fire won’t be able to burn effectively through an area that has recently burned. Fire in general moves slower down hill than it does up hill. Flames move faster with the wind than against the wind, these factors are used to head off the fire’s path and effectively contain it.
Once the fire has been contained, it is usually up to a mop up crew to go in, identify hot spots, areas that are still burning, and either put them out by hand or let the fire burn itself out
Helicopters play a bigger role with reconnisense than water dropping. You can identify hot spot locations quicker from the air, and relay that information to ground crews.
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