Well the title is the question.
With ‘split’ I mean create some space between blocks where fire has nothing to travel to the next block to spread.
I imagine that actions like dropping water with helicopters would also be unnecessary since we could ‘give up’ a burning block and then the fire would be over.
Or am I too naive about it?
In: Earth Science
This is vaguely what proper forest management is supposed to do. One factor on why forest fires can get so big and spread so fast is when there is too much “junk” on the forest floor. Stuff like little sapling trees, dead trees that have fallen, years and years worth of leaves. It’s often that sort of thing that catches fire first. Big, mature trees can often withstand a relatively fast fire around their trunks, but if there’s too much litter, the fire burns too long and can reach up into the tops of the big trees, leading to the infernos we see. So one strategy that has been deployed to fight this is “controlled burns” where firefighters and forestry people will pick a section of woods, and go in and slowly and methodically burn off the excess junk. Then the next time a wildfire starts, it has way less fuel in a given area to burn.
One of the lessons learned from the Yellowstone NP fire back in the late 80’s was it’s better in the long run to sometimes let smaller fires burn more often, because then they don’t become massive. They had been suppressing any and all fires in Yellowstone for years, and when something finally caught and they couldn’t get it under control, so it burned most the park to a crisp. So now, they take a slightly more “hands off” approach, in that if a fire starts, they keep an eye on it and let it burn at least for a while
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