Wild Fire Research Paper

Improved Essays
There are three conditions that need to be present in order for a wildfire to burn, which firefighters refer to as the fire triangle: fuel, oxygen, and a heat source. Fuel is any flammable material surrounding a fire, including trees, grasses, brush, even homes. The greater an area's fuel load, the more intense the fire. Air supplies the oxygen a fire needs to burn. Heat sources help spark the wildfire and bring fuel to temperatures hot enough to ignite. Lightning, burning campfires or cigarettes, hot winds, and even the sun can all provide sufficient heat to spark a wildfire.

Although four out of five wildfires are started by people, nature is usually more than happy to help fan the flames. Dry weather and drought convert green vegetation

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    This is a very good reason why humans cause climate change. According to Plos ONE #11.4, 95% of California’s wildfires are caused by human actions. The interaction between humans and wildfires across all of California demonstrate the need to understand the relationship between them, mostly in the face of a changing climate and expanding human communities. People in California have built in areas of natural vegetation know as the Wildlife-Urban Interface,(WUI), much of which the area is known to be fire prone. This means that most of the wildfires are made by humans, and also meaning that humans cause major fires.…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In 1736 the first real volunteer department known as the union fire company was started in Philadelphia by Ben Franklin. The Union fire company was made up of all volunteers that would make a line from the closet water source and pass the buckets to the fire. There were many other fire brigades that were clubs or co-ops which only intended to fight each other’s fires that were in the group. Ben Franklin’s concept was to help everyone and their property from burning. During their spare time they met monthly to discuss new tactics on how to fight the fires and train.…

    • 513 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    During the summer of 2016, I fought wildland fire for the Weiser Ranger District of the Payette National Forest in Idaho. I worked on a type four heavy engine, E-421. As a firefighter, I was able to witness climate change and increasing fire activity first hand on an off forest assignment to Midas, Nevada. It was there where my module was the first to respond to the Hot Pot Fire. In a little under 36 hours, the Hot Pot Fire spread 123,000 acres.…

    • 1382 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Over the course of the last five days, four significant wildland fires have swept through the region destroying over three thousand homes north of Columbia County. The clarity and purpose of the information provided during this press conference, is to ensure that the best quality of information is getting to the community. The initial fire began at an Aiken, South Carolina RV and Campsite due to various piles of debris left unattended and burning. The debris exploded, and quickly spread growing to about 250 acres from eight acres in 45 minutes. In relation to the Columbia County community, the wildfire is approximately 27.2 miles or 30 minutes away in North Augusta, South Carolina.…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “Blow UP” by Sebastian Junger, he states “The fire blew up a little ridge below me, Haugh said later, “People were yelling in their radios, RUN, RUN, RUN!” (Junger p.510) Nature has its way of attacking itself that leaves the rest of us, running for safety. In this story people are affected by lightning striking a forest on a mountain. Another example of nature working against itself is when the wind blew the fire in a way that caused it to spread.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Thunderheads gather, and even without rain there are lightning storms with many strikes on tall, exposed ridges, where a dead pine or fir can smolder for days before dropping live sparks on the dry grass or brush below. Wildfire is a natural part of the ecology of the West, but the policy of the U.S. Forestry Service at the time was to try to contain small fires before they burned large areas of national forest. When the fire spotters’ reports were radioed in to the regional fire fighting headquarters in Missoula, a crew of fifteen Smokejumpers was dispatched in a C-47 airplane under the direction of foreman R. Wagner Dodge. The pilot reported a great deal of turbulence over Mann Gulch, so the Smokejumpers were dropped from two thousand feet instead of the customary twelve hundred. Their equipment was scattered, and their radio was smashed when its parachute failed to open.…

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are some legendary forest fires that have been documented all the way back to the late 1800s. The most notable fire in that century was the Peshtigo Fire of 1871. After these fires, there were two main conservationists, Franklin Hough and Bernard Fernow, which pushed for protecting timber supplies and watersheds. The federal government then established the US Forest Service in 1905. The Forest Service was given control over the national forests.…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The South Canyon Fire The South Canyon fire was a major fire that occurred on July 2, 1994, seven miles from a town in Colorado named Glenwood Springs. The fire was on Storm King Mountain and burned about 2,115 acres of land and took 14 lives with it. Some major causes of the fire were high temperatures, droughts throughout that year, and low humidity. This fire caused many families and friends to lose loved ones and changed the way firefighters today fight fires.…

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction One of many public safety professions, firefighters are on call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. They are ready at a moment’s notice to risk their lives in order to save others. They are regarded with the highest of honor, trust and admiration by people all over the world. Best known for putting out fires, running into a burning buildings and saving lives in various forms of distress. Heroes of life safety and property conservation, firefighters are global icons, and uphold a community image being good and trustworthy.…

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The current wildfires are being tamed currents with with the help of 16 hundred firefighter including people from across the nation. The fires are being contained by crews that are building containment lines. Containment lines are used by the crews to burn vegetation in between them so it prevents any fires to burn in the area. The containment lines are constructed by the crews that dig deep hole using bulldozers. They clear the area by discarding leaves, branches, and plants that could potentially create a fuel source for the fire.…

    • 131 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    i. children not expose to direct spray or tach cleaning product ii. must be keep in high locked cupboard iii. clearly labelling all the product with the sigh of danger product , the name, information about risk factors 24. Understanding your role in fire safety is an important factor in keeping children safe in Early Childhood Education and Care. Using the table below, explain in your own words the following aspects of basic home fire safety: Fire spread and speed Fire can spread very fast it can take few minutes to transfer from point to point Heat transfer The fire can transfer from place to place by heat transfer Radiation Is how he fire can transfer by rays Convection Fire can transfer through liquid or gas due to the circulation…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    “The 2016 California wildfires are a series of wildfires that burned across State of California during 2016. As of 10 September 2016, 4,636 fires had burned 200,601 acres (811.80 km), “(According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection). Wildfire is a typically occurs between wildland fire difficult to control. Usually caused by lightning, some causes by someone to negligence, intentional arson, volcanic eruptions and pyroclastic cloud, also heat waves drought and small forest fires are the main factors contributing to a forest fire. In order to be prepared for wildfires, people need to know how to be safe, and the government needs to let people know where is safe.…

    • 229 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Flashover

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Fire has been used by humans for at most 1.5 million years, but now everyone either uses or experiences fire in some way. Wood needs a base temperature of 356 ℉ to ignite, but normally there's more to it than that. Most wood has water inside it and fire cannot burn with water, so a fire will heat the wood to a temperature of 212℉, so that the water inside the wood boils and escapes as steam (Synonym ). As wood dries, at 572℉ it begins to release combustible gases that ignite when they contact an open flame. The gases then burn slowly raise the temperature to around 1100℉.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    There is a risk of wildfires in the Amazon basin because North Atlantic hurricanes and Amazon fires are connected through ocean and atmosphere interactions in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The reason behind this linkage is that when the North Atlantic waters get warmer than usual on the surface, less rain falls in the southern Amazon. As a result, groundwater is not fully recharged by the end of the rainy season. This is a problem because when there's a dry spell, less water will be stored away in the soil, preventing plants from evaporating water through their stems and leaves. Subsequently, the atmosphere starts to get very dry which causes fires to spread rapidly across the dry land.…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    California Wildfires Essay

    • 1987 Words
    • 8 Pages

    California Wildfires: A Burning Problem California, as of recent decades, has a warming relationship with wildfires. The state has seen an increase in wildfires which some believe to be attributed to anthropogenic climate change. Climate change is expected to result in more variable weather patterns that are likely to lead to longer and more severe droughts (“Climate change”, 2016).…

    • 1987 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays

Related Topics