How can accidental forest fires occur so frequently when lighting a small fire of dead, dried wood can be so difficult?

Question

How can accidental forest fires occur so frequently when lighting a small fire of dead, dried wood can be so difficult?

In: Other

Answer 1

Natural forest fires do not occur frequently – forests go for decades and decades without a fire breaking out. Natural causes for forest fires include lightning, volcanos, meteors, coal seam fires, methane discharges and mulch fires. Lightning is by far the most frequent cause though. Inevitably an undisturbed forest that hasn’t otherwise burnt down with either land up with enough dead trees from disease or malnutrition that the mulch would build up sufficiently to cause a spontaneous compost fire.

Human caused forest fires like cigarette butt fires only happen when the circumstances are perfect for fire – lots of very dry grass leading onto lots of very dry leaves leading onto lots of dry twigs with a steady gentle breeze bringing in a good amount of fresh air..

Lighting a fire is difficult because the ignition temperature of wood is 250 to 300 degrees Celsius. Don’t forget that a key component of fire is lots of oxygen and not a lot of CO2 – if you don’t have a fire place with an open flume to ready suck out the carbon dioxide filled air your fire isn’t going to last long.