50 Fun Facts About Wildfires

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

Campfires, power-line failures and equipment sparks lead the list; arson may account for over 20% of the human-caused ones.

Which of these is listed as a natural cause of wildfire ignition?

Lightning, volcanic eruptions and spontaneous combustion round out the natural causes.

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

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 fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra started after a rice project drained and dried the peat.

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

Invasive climbing plants such as kudzu and Old World climbing fern encourage them.

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

High moisture content stops ignition because energy goes into evaporating water before fuel reaches its fire point.

How fast can a wildfire move through grasslands, according to the encyclopaedia figure?

In forests the forward rate of spread tops out around 10.8 km/h, half the grassland speed.

What is it called when wind carries burning embers ahead of the fire front to start new fires?

In Australian bushfires, spot fires have been recorded as far as 20 km from the main front.

Large wildfires can generate spinning columns of flame with tornado-like force at speeds above what?

These fire whirls, along with pyrocumulus clouds and strong convection columns, signal extreme fire behaviour.

US wildfire suppression operations are organised around a 24-hour 'fire day' that begins at what time?

Burn rates of smoldering logs can be five times higher by day thanks to lower humidity and stronger winds.

Roughly what share of Australia's land mass burned in the record 1974-75 wildfire season?

An estimated 117 million hectares burned, yet the remote, low-intensity fires caused only about A$5 million in damage.

Over the past century, roughly what share of global carbon emissions have come from wildfires?

In 2020 the carbon released by California's wildfires exceeded the state's other carbon emissions.

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

That is why retardant can cause eutrophication if it washes into water bodies.

Communities in the Philippines maintain fire lines of what width between the forest and their village?

Villagers patrol the lines during the summer months and dry seasons.

Charcoal fossils of which giant organism are the earliest evidence of wildfire on Earth?

They date to the Silurian period, about 430 million years ago.

Charred peaks on Lepidodendron forests from which geological period are evidence of ancient crown fires?

Jurassic gymnosperm forests, by contrast, show evidence of frequent, light surface fires.

Which president launched a 1937 fire prevention campaign that later featured Uncle Sam and Disney's Bambi?

The campaign's mascot, Smokey Bear, became one of the most recognised characters in the country.

Which invasive tree, introduced to California, is named as having increased wildfire intensity?

Gamba grass plays a similar role in Australia.

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

Lookouts locate smoke with an Osborne Fire Finder and also plot lightning strikes to watch for later ignition.

What is the sighting device in a lookout tower, used to pinpoint the bearing of a smoke column, called?

The small room atop the tower is called the cab; where no tower is needed it is a ground cab.

Smokejumpers reach remote wildfires in their early stages by what means?

As of 2025 only Russia, China, Canada, the United States and Malaysia field smokejumpers.

The first operational smokejumper fire jumps in the US were made in July 1940 in which national forest?

Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley made the jump at Rock Pillar near Marten Creek, out of Ninemile.

How many smokejumpers and firefighters died in the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana?

Foreman Wagner Dodge survived by lighting an escape fire and lying in its burned patch while the main blaze passed around him.

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

Maclean, a University of Chicago English professor, also wrote A River Runs Through It.

Which mascot's slogan changed in 2001 from 'Prevent Forest Fires' to 'Prevent Wildfires'?

The change acknowledged big outbreaks in grasslands and clarified he was not against prescribed burns.

In which year did the US Forest Service authorise its bear mascot, now counted as his birthday?

Artist Albert Staehle delivered the first poster that October, showing Smokey pouring water on a campfire.

The living mascot cub of the US fire-prevention campaign was rescued from a 1950 wildfire in which state?

Found after the Capitan Gap fire with burned paws, he was first nicknamed Hotfoot Teddy.

The Forest Service's mascot bear got so much mail that in 1964 the Postal Service gave him what?

ZIP code 20252 is still in use; he was getting more than 13,000 letters a week and loved peanut butter sandwiches.

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

This heat-triggered seed release is called pyriscence, the best-studied form of serotiny.

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

Without fire, shade-tolerant seedlings of other species crowd out the young sequoias.

Fire-tolerant plants that regrow from surviving tissue after a burn are known by what nickname?

After an Australian bushfire the Mountain Grey Gum sends out shoots along the whole trunk from energy stored in its roots.

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

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?

Fire-adapted invaders create a feedback loop: more fire, more grass, more fire.

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

Peshtigo killed an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 people, at least five times the toll of the Great Chicago Fire that same night.

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

Holland, Manistee and Port Huron in Michigan also burned that day.

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

It burned over two days in August, killed 87 people and won the Forest Service a doubled budget from Congress.

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

He drew his pistol on anyone who tried to flee; the shaft is now on the National Register of Historic Places as the Pulaski Tunnel.

Approximately what percentage of Yellowstone National Park burned in the fires of 1988?

On 8 September 1988 the entire park was closed to non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history.

From 1972, Yellowstone let lightning-caused blazes burn under controlled conditions as what?

Between 1972 and 1987 only 235 such fires burned a modest 33,759 acres, before the wet years ended.

By 1935, US Forest Service policy demanded that every wildfire be suppressed by what deadline?

Aldo Leopold had argued as early as 1924 that wildfires could benefit ecosystems.

Australia's Black Saturday bushfires of 7 February 2009 killed how many people in Victoria?

As many as 400 individual fires were recorded that day; a Royal Commission under Justice Bernard Teague followed.

On Black Saturday, Melbourne recorded its hottest temperature ever - what was it?

Humidity fell to two percent and the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index passed 200, beyond Black Friday 1939 and Ash Wednesday 1983.

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

More than 24 million hectares burned and an estimated three billion terrestrial vertebrates were killed or displaced.

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

The company later pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and had filed for bankruptcy.

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

The fire killed 85 people, displaced over 50,000 and destroyed more than 18,000 structures.

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

It can reach the lower stratosphere and produce lightning, hail and even tornadoes, sometimes extinguishing the fire that made it.

Canada's record-breaking 2023 wildfire season burned roughly how many hectares?

Smoke plumes affected air quality and farm output thousands of kilometres away; 3.24 million hectares had already burned by June 2025.

Firebreaks were used for wildfire protection as early as the 14th century on which Mediterranean island?

Centuries later, HMS Beagle explorers recorded Aboriginal Australians using fire for clearing and hunting, later dubbed fire-stick farming.

At roughly what temperature does the pyrolysis of wood begin releasing flammable gases?

Heat radiating ahead of a fire front can warm the air to about 800 C, pre-drying fuels before the flames arrive.

Satellite tracking has shown wildfire smoke plumes staying intact over distances exceeding how far?

Canadian and US wildfires together burn an average of about 54,500 square kilometres every year.