Wild fires

• Good bye to 2018 to my viewers and my best wishes for happy New Year 2019.
• As the smoke settles from 2018’s fires at the close of the year, it serves as a stark reminder of the raging wildfires that have plagued California and the rest of the American West. More than 8.5 million acres (34,600 square kilometers) burned this year, and they burned faster and hotter than experts have ever seen.
• Fire arises out of three ingredients: fuel, heat and oxygen. Oxygen is readily available in the air, so that leaves fuel and heat. The fuel is anything that will burn, including brush, grass, trees and even houses. The dryer the fuel, the more easily it burns. And the last component — heat — burns the fuel and desiccates, or dries up, the surrounding area as the fire spreads (Fire is a chemical reaction that releases light and heat.)
• These natural disasters, however, often have unnatural beginnings.
• Fifty years ago, mid-November was wet. Maybe we would have [strong] winds, but it would be too wet to start a fire [in California],” Quinn-Davidson said. But mid-November of 2018 was dry enough to perpetuate the most deadly and destructive fire in the Golden State’s history.
• California burned more than it does now, but at [a] lower intensity and slower,” Quinn-Davidson said. We are seeing fires that are unusual, like the Camp Fire that, at one point, burned through 70,000 acres [about 280 square km] in a day. We’ve never seen that before.”
• Many communities are already taking steps and setting precedents. Lot of communities are actively working on becoming fire-adaptive [and learning] how to live with fire and design a community in a way that is not so vulnerable.

  

    

(Images/videos taken from google/IE)