50 free Wildfires trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly what share of wildfires in the United States are started by human activity?
Over 85%
Campfires, power-line failures and equipment sparks lead the list; arson may account for over 20% of the human-caused ones.
Q 02Which of these is listed as a natural cause of wildfire ignition?
Sparks from rock falls
Lightning, volcanic eruptions and spontaneous combustion round out the natural causes.
Q 03What is a fire that burns suspended material at the treetop level called?
Crown
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 fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra started after a rice project drained and dried the peat.
Q 05Fires that carry flames from low vegetation into the tree canopy via small trees and vines are called what?
Ladder
Invasive climbing plants such as kudzu and Old World climbing fern encourage them.
Q 06Together with heat and fuel, which element completes the fire triangle needed for a wildfire?
Oxygen
High moisture content stops ignition because energy goes into evaporating water before fuel reaches its fire point.
Q 07How fast can a wildfire move through grasslands, according to the encyclopaedia figure?
22 km/h (14 mph)
In forests the forward rate of spread tops out around 10.8 km/h, half the grassland speed.
Q 08What is it called when wind carries burning embers ahead of the fire front to start new fires?
Spotting
In Australian bushfires, spot fires have been recorded as far as 20 km from the main front.
Q 09Large wildfires can generate spinning columns of flame with tornado-like force at speeds above what?
80 km/h (50 mph)
These fire whirls, along with pyrocumulus clouds and strong convection columns, signal extreme fire behaviour.
Q 10US wildfire suppression operations are organised around a 24-hour 'fire day' that begins at what time?
10:00 a.m.
Burn rates of smoldering logs can be five times higher by day thanks to lower humidity and stronger winds.
Q 11Roughly what share of Australia's land mass burned in the record 1974-75 wildfire season?
15%
An estimated 117 million hectares burned, yet the remote, low-intensity fires caused only about A$5 million in damage.
Q 12Over the past century, roughly what share of global carbon emissions have come from wildfires?
20-25%
In 2020 the carbon released by California's wildfires exceeded the state's other carbon emissions.
Q 13Aerial fire retardants use ammonium phosphates and sulfates, the same agents found in what?
Fertilizers
That is why retardant can cause eutrophication if it washes into water bodies.
Q 21Smokejumpers reach remote wildfires in their early stages by what means?
Parachute
As of 2025 only Russia, China, Canada, the United States and Malaysia field smokejumpers.
Q 22The first operational smokejumper fire jumps in the US were made in July 1940 in which national forest?
Nez Perce (Idaho)
Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley made the jump at Rock Pillar near Marten Creek, out of Ninemile.
Q 23How many smokejumpers and firefighters died in the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana?
13
Foreman Wagner Dodge survived by lighting an escape fire and lying in its burned patch while the main blaze passed around him.
Q 14Communities in the Philippines maintain fire lines of what width between the forest and their village?
5 to 10 metres
Villagers patrol the lines during the summer months and dry seasons.
Q 15Charcoal fossils of which giant organism are the earliest evidence of wildfire on Earth?
The fungus Prototaxites
They date to the Silurian period, about 430 million years ago.
Q 16Charred peaks on Lepidodendron forests from which geological period are evidence of ancient crown fires?
Carboniferous
Jurassic gymnosperm forests, by contrast, show evidence of frequent, light surface fires.
Q 17Which president launched a 1937 fire prevention campaign that later featured Uncle Sam and Disney's Bambi?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The campaign's mascot, Smokey Bear, became one of the most recognised characters in the country.
Q 18Which invasive tree, introduced to California, is named as having increased wildfire intensity?
Eucalyptus
Gamba grass plays a similar role in Australia.
Q 19Early fire lookout towers reported fires by telephone, heliograph and what living messenger?
Carrier pigeons
Lookouts locate smoke with an Osborne Fire Finder and also plot lightning strikes to watch for later ignition.
Q 20What is the sighting device in a lookout tower, used to pinpoint the bearing of a smoke column, called?
Osborne Fire Finder
The small room atop the tower is called the cab; where no tower is needed it is a ground cab.
Q 24Which author's posthumously published book Young Men and Fire investigated the Mann Gulch fire?
Norman Maclean
Maclean, a University of Chicago English professor, also wrote A River Runs Through It.
Q 25Which mascot's slogan changed in 2001 from 'Prevent Forest Fires' to 'Prevent Wildfires'?
Smokey Bear
The change acknowledged big outbreaks in grasslands and clarified he was not against prescribed burns.
Q 26In which year did the US Forest Service authorise its bear mascot, now counted as his birthday?
1944
Artist Albert Staehle delivered the first poster that October, showing Smokey pouring water on a campfire.
Q 27The living mascot cub of the US fire-prevention campaign was rescued from a 1950 wildfire in which state?
New Mexico
Found after the Capitan Gap fire with burned paws, he was first nicknamed Hotfoot Teddy.
Q 28The Forest Service's mascot bear got so much mail that in 1964 the Postal Service gave him what?
His own ZIP code
ZIP code 20252 is still in use; he was getting more than 13,000 letters a week and loved peanut butter sandwiches.
Q 29The cones of which conifer are sealed with resin that only melts in a fire, releasing the seeds?
Lodgepole pine
This heat-triggered seed release is called pyriscence, the best-studied form of serotiny.
Q 30Which shade-intolerant tree needs fire to open gaps in the canopy so its seedlings can compete?
Giant sequoia
Without fire, shade-tolerant seedlings of other species crowd out the young sequoias.