48 Fun Facts About Wildfires

Roughly what share of wildfires in the United States are started by people?

85% is the National Park Service's round figure: campfires left unattended, burning debris, discarded cigarettes, faulty equipment and arson start the great majority of US wildfires.

Which historic Maui town was largely destroyed by a wind-driven wildfire in August 2023?

Lahaina, once the Hawaiian Kingdom's capital, burned on 8 August 2023 as gusts tied to a hurricane passing far to the south drove the flames; more than 100 people died, the worst US wildfire toll since 1918.

What is a fire that burns suspended material at the treetop level called?

A crown fire burns suspended material — needles, leaves and branches — at canopy level; ignition of the canopy is termed crowning and depends on canopy density, height and continuity.

Ground fires that smolder slowly for months are typically fed by what?

Peat and buried roots feed ground fires, which can smoulder for months; the 1997 Kalimantan peat fires started after the Mega Rice Project drained and dried the peatland.

Fires that carry flames from low vegetation into the tree canopy via small trees and vines are called what?

Ladder fires climb from the ground on small trees and vines; in Florida the invasive Old World climbing fern drapes trunks so thickly that it leads flames up into the canopy and kills the trees.

Together with heat and fuel, which element completes the fire triangle needed for a wildfire?

Oxygen completes the fire triangle with heat and fuel; high moisture stops ignition because energy goes into evaporating water before the fuel reaches its fire point.

Which dense evergreen shrubland covering much of coastal California is adapted to burn in infrequent but intense wildfires?

Chaparral shrubs such as chamise regrow from their bases after a blaze, but the system suits rare, fierce fires: where burns come too often, the shrubs give way to non-native grassland.

What term describes wind carrying burning embers ahead of a fire front to start new fires?

Spotting lets a wildfire leap roads and rivers: wind and the fire's own updraft loft burning embers, called firebrands, which start new blazes well ahead of the front.

What is a spinning, tornado-like column of flame spawned by an intense wildfire called?

Fire whirl is the term, and the biggest behave like real tornadoes: one inside California's 2018 Carr Fire reached an estimated 143 mph, toppling transmission towers and uprooting trees.

Which US National Weather Service alert means low humidity and strong winds have made critical wildfire conditions imminent?

Red flag warning days come with blunt advice from forecasters: be extremely careful with any open flame. The milder Fire Weather Watch only says such conditions could develop.

In 2019-20, bushfires burned much of which wildlife-rich island off South Australia?

Kangaroo Island is a wildlife haven, with large protected areas that are home to sea lions, penguins and koalas, so fires that swept so much of it left some of its rarest species fighting for survival.

In May 2016 a wildfire forced some 88,000 people to flee which Canadian oil-sands city?

Fort McMurray emptied along Highway 63 as flames reached the road, and the shutdown that followed halted about a million barrels of oil a day, roughly a quarter of Canada's output.

Aerial fire retardants use ammonium phosphates and sulfates, the same agents found in what?

Retardant salts — ammonium phosphates and sulfates — are the same agents used in fertilizers, which is why retardant washing into streams or lakes can cause eutrophication.

What name is given to the elite US ground crews that hike in to work the most hazardous parts of a wildfire?

Hotshots are highly trained handcrews given the most demanding jobs on a fire, and the danger is real: Arizona's Yarnell Hill Fire killed 19 of the 20 members of one crew in 2013.

During Australia's 2019-20 bushfires, firefighters ran a special mission to save the only wild grove of which 'dinosaur tree'?

Wollemi pine grows wild only in a few secret gorges north-west of Sydney, found in 1994; as the fire closed in, crews installed irrigation and aircraft dropped retardant to shield the trees.

Charred treetops in fossil Lepidodendron forests, evidence of wildfires 300 million years ago, date from which geological period?

Carboniferous means coal-bearing: its swamp forests of towering Lepidodendron left both the coal seams and charred tops showing fire once ran through their canopies, unlike the light surface fires of Jurassic woods.

Which invasive tree, introduced to California, has increased wildfire intensity there?

Eucalyptus, brought to California from Australia in the 1850s, sheds oily bark and leaves that intensify wildfires; invasive gamba grass plays a similar role in northern Australia.

Early fire lookout towers reported fires by telephone, heliograph and what living messenger?

Carrier pigeons, telephones and mirror-flashing heliographs all carried smoke sightings from lookout towers, which the Forest Service began building across the country after the devastating fires of 1910.

Many species of which Australian wildflower shrub hold their seeds in woody cones that open only after a bushfire?

Banksia follicles mostly stay clamped shut until a bushfire prompts them to split, releasing papery-winged seeds that spin down onto ground the flames have just cleared.

Smokejumpers, wildland firefighters who mount the initial attack on remote fires, reach them how?

Parachute drops put smokejumpers beside a remote blaze while it is still small; their tools, food and water follow by parachute too, leaving a crew self-sufficient for its first 48 hours.

What is a fire deliberately lit by land managers to clear built-up fuel and reduce the risk of larger wildfires called?

Prescribed burn planners wait for the right wind and fuel moisture so the flames stay manageable; in 2001 Smokey Bear's slogan swapped 'forest fires' for 'wildfires' partly to show he never opposed such burns.

What saved foreman Wagner Dodge at Mann Gulch in 1949?

An escape fire: Dodge burned off a patch of grass and lay down in its ashes while the main blaze swept around him; his crew, never trained in the trick, ran on, and 13 men died.

Which author's posthumously published book Young Men and Fire investigated the Mann Gulch fire?

Norman Maclean, the author of A River Runs Through It, took up the fire's story in his seventies and left the manuscript unfinished when he died in 1990; Young Men and Fire appeared two years later.

As of 2023, the largest wildfire ever recorded in the European Union burned that August in which country?

Greece's Evros fire broke out near Alexandroupolis and swept through the Dadia Forest, one of Europe's most important refuges for birds of prey and home to rare vultures.

Which Disney character starred on US fire-prevention posters in 1944, just before Smokey Bear was created?

Bambi's poster proved an animal could sell the message, but Disney had lent the fawn only briefly, so in August 1944 the Forest Service authorised a bear of its own: Smokey.

The orphaned cub who became the living Smokey Bear was rescued from a 1950 wildfire in which state?

New Mexico's Capitan Mountains fire left the cub clinging to a tree with burned paws; first nicknamed Hotfoot Teddy, he was flown to the National Zoo in Washington, where he lived for 26 years.

The Forest Service's mascot bear got so much mail that in 1964 he was given what?

Smokey was given his own ZIP code, 20252, in 1964, when he was receiving more than 13,000 letters a week; the live bear at the National Zoo was famous for loving peanut butter sandwiches.

The cones of which conifer are sealed with resin that only melts in a fire, releasing the seeds?

Lodgepole pine keeps many cones glued shut with resin until a fire's heat melts it and showers seed onto freshly cleared ground, though not every tree does it: some stands open their cones every year.

Which shade-intolerant tree needs fire to open gaps in the canopy so its seedlings can compete?

Giant sequoia seeds germinate best on bare mineral soil in open sun, so without periodic fire to clear the litter and thin the canopy, shade-loving firs crowd the seedlings out.

Fire-tolerant plants that regrow from surviving tissue after a burn are called what?

Resprouters regrow from surviving tissue: after an Australian bushfire the Mountain Grey Gum sends out epicormic shoots along the whole trunk, fed by energy stored in its roots.

Which southeastern US ecosystem had the highest fire frequency, burning once a decade or more?

Longleaf pine savanna historically burned every one to ten years; without fire, deciduous trees invade and shade out both the pines and the orchid- and pitcher-plant-rich understory.

Which invasive grass has increased fire frequency in the western United States?

Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), an annual from Eurasia, dries early and carpets the Great Basin with fine fuel, creating a feedback loop of more fire, more cheatgrass, more fire.

The deadliest wildfire in recorded history struck which US state on 8 October 1871?

Wisconsin's Peshtigo fire killed well over a thousand people in a single night; more than 350 of them lie in one mass grave because nobody was left alive who could identify them.

The Peshtigo blaze is largely forgotten because it shared a day with which famous disaster?

The Great Chicago Fire broke out the same night, 8 October 1871, and took the headlines, though it killed about 300 people while Peshtigo's toll ran to several times that.

The Great Fire of 1910, or Big Burn, scorched about three million acres mainly in which two states?

Idaho and Montana bore the brunt of the Big Burn of 20-21 August 1910, which killed more than 80 people, most of them firefighters, and pushed the young Forest Service towards fighting every wildfire it could reach.

During the 1910 Big Burn, Ranger Ed Pulaski saved most of his crew by herding them into what?

An abandoned mine tunnel near Wallace sheltered Pulaski's crew: he hung wet blankets over the mouth and threatened to shoot anyone who bolted, and all but a handful of his men walked out alive.

Which US national park saw wildfires burn 36% of its area in 1988?

Yellowstone's fires defied thousands of firefighters for months; what finally checked them was the weather, when a quarter-inch of snow fell on 11 September.

Ecologists use what term for the patchwork of burned and unburned forest left by the huge 1988 national-park fires?

Mosaic is the word: the 1988 fires left severely burned, lightly burned and untouched patches side by side, so seeds from surviving trees could quickly reach the bare ground.

Which hot, dry winds drive Southern California's autumn wildfires?

Santa Ana winds are hot, dry north-easterlies that blow from the Great Basin toward the Southern California coast in autumn, drying fuels and fanning blazes such as the 2017 Thomas Fire.

Australia's deadliest bushfires, on 7 February 2009, are known by what name?

Black Saturday killed 173 people as about 400 fires burned in one day of record heat; Australia names its worst fires for the day they peaked, as with Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983.

Australia's 2019-20 bushfire season is widely known by what name?

Black Summer fires burned about 24 million hectares and killed or displaced an estimated three billion animals; parched soils let a season that began unusually early burn on for months.

Failed hardware from which utility ignited California's deadliest wildfire, the 2018 Camp Fire?

A worn hook on a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) transmission line started the Camp Fire; PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January 2019 and in 2020 pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Which town in Butte County was mostly destroyed by the Camp Fire in November 2018?

Paradise lost all but about 5% of its buildings within hours on 8 November 2018; the census counted 26,218 residents in 2010 and just 4,764 in 2020.

A towering thunderstorm cloud generated by the heat of a wildfire is called what?

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds can punch into the lower stratosphere and bring hail, violent winds and even tornadoes, which fan the fire that made them and endanger crews on the ground.

Smoke from Canada's 2023 wildfires blotted out which US city's skyline that June?

New York's skyline vanished into a thick haze on 6-7 June 2023 after an unusual weather pattern steered smoke from fires in Quebec south into the United States instead of east and out to sea, as usually happens.

Smoke from land-clearing fires in which country shrouds neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia in haze during many dry seasons?

Indonesia's haze comes mainly from slash-and-burn clearing on Sumatra and in Kalimantan that runs wild in the dry season; the 2015 episode closed schools in three countries.

Which heat-driven process breaks wood down into the flammable gases that actually burn in a wildfire?

Pyrolysis sets in at about 230 °C, once the heat of the approaching front has boiled the water out of the wood; the flames you see are those escaping gases burning, not the solid timber.

What foil-like tent do US wildland crews carry to crawl under as a last resort if flames trap them?

Fire shelter fabric reflects radiant heat and traps breathable air, but it cannot survive sustained contact with flame: the firefighters killed at Arizona's Yarnell Hill in 2013 had all deployed theirs.