Wildfires Trivia
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48 free Wildfires trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This wildfires trivia quiz covers the science, history and firefighting of the planet's biggest blazes. The easy questions come from the basics: what most wildfires in the United States are started by, the three sides of the fire triangle, which mascot tells you that only you can prevent wildfires, and which continent calls them bushfires. From there it moves into the details fire scientists and firefighters know: how fast a grass fire can travel, what a crown fire is, why lodgepole pine cones need heat, the Silurian fossils that are the earliest evidence of fire on Earth, the pyrocumulonimbus clouds that make their own weather, and the disasters that changed policy - Peshtigo in 1871, the Big Burn of 1910, Mann Gulch, Yellowstone in 1988, Black Saturday in Victoria and California's Camp Fire. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on wildfire, fire ecology and the individual fires before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our volcanoes, fire safety and firefighters quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly what share of wildfires in the United States are started by people?
85%
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.
Q 02Which historic Maui town was largely destroyed by a wind-driven wildfire in August 2023?
Lahaina
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.
Q 03What is a fire that burns suspended material at the treetop level called?
Crown
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.
Q 04Ground fires that smolder slowly for months are typically fed by what?
Peat and buried roots
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.
Q 05Fires that carry flames from low vegetation into the tree canopy via small trees and vines are called what?
Ladder
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.
Q 06Together with heat and fuel, which element completes the fire triangle needed for a wildfire?
Oxygen
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.
Q 07Which dense evergreen shrubland covering much of coastal California is adapted to burn in infrequent but intense wildfires?
Chaparral
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.
Q 08What term describes wind carrying burning embers ahead of a fire front to start new fires?
Spotting
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.
Q 09What is a spinning, tornado-like column of flame spawned by an intense wildfire called?
Fire whirl
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.
Q 10Which US National Weather Service alert means low humidity and strong winds have made critical wildfire conditions imminent?
Red flag warning
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.
Q 11In 2019-20, bushfires burned much of which wildlife-rich island off South Australia?
Kangaroo Island
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.
Q 12In May 2016 a wildfire forced some 88,000 people to flee which Canadian oil-sands city?
Fort McMurray
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.
Q 13Aerial fire retardants use ammonium phosphates and sulfates, the same agents found in what?
Fertilizers
Q 21What is a fire deliberately lit by land managers to clear built-up fuel and reduce the risk of larger wildfires called?
Prescribed burn
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.
Q 22What saved foreman Wagner Dodge at Mann Gulch in 1949?
An escape fire
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.
Q 23Which author's posthumously published book Young Men and Fire investigated the Mann Gulch fire?
Norman Maclean
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.
Q 14What name is given to the elite US ground crews that hike in to work the most hazardous parts of a wildfire?
Hotshots
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.
Q 15During Australia's 2019-20 bushfires, firefighters ran a special mission to save the only wild grove of which 'dinosaur tree'?
Wollemi pine
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.
Q 16Charred treetops in fossil Lepidodendron forests, evidence of wildfires 300 million years ago, date from which geological period?
Carboniferous
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.
Q 17Which invasive tree, introduced to California, has increased wildfire intensity there?
Eucalyptus
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.
Q 18Early fire lookout towers reported fires by telephone, heliograph and what living messenger?
Carrier pigeons
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.
Q 19Many species of which Australian wildflower shrub hold their seeds in woody cones that open only after a bushfire?
Banksia
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.
Q 20Smokejumpers, wildland firefighters who mount the initial attack on remote fires, reach them how?
Parachute
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.
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.
Q 24As of 2023, the largest wildfire ever recorded in the European Union burned that August in which country?
Greece
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.
Q 25Which Disney character starred on US fire-prevention posters in 1944, just before Smokey Bear was created?
Bambi
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.
Q 26The orphaned cub who became the living Smokey Bear was rescued from a 1950 wildfire in which state?
New Mexico
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.
Q 27The Forest Service's mascot bear got so much mail that in 1964 he was given what?
His own ZIP code
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.
Q 28The cones of which conifer are sealed with resin that only melts in a fire, releasing the seeds?
Lodgepole pine
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.
Q 29Which shade-intolerant tree needs fire to open gaps in the canopy so its seedlings can compete?
Giant sequoia
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.
Q 30Fire-tolerant plants that regrow from surviving tissue after a burn are called what?
Resprouters
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.