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In regard to the western fires this past summer, the fuel load consisted of dead underbrush that had not been removed, dead trees that had not been removed, debris on the forest floor, a very heavy fuel load of live trees and undergrowth, and dry conditions that encouraged the fires to grow and make their own weather… and that is exactly what happened.\u00a0 It’s all outlined in the Wired article, which is rather long. I do not know how accurate the author is in his observations, but his observation about air twisting as it rises is something I found happened when I was flying gliders.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/west-coast-california-wildfire-infernos\/<\/a><\/p>\n After reading this, I’m not just glad that firefighters do this kind of work, but also glad that the DNR people in my area have enough common sense to thin out the overcrowded woodland areas, and restore marshlands and wetlands to their original spots, because that reduces the fuel load that can and will threaten all suburban areas around any large city and creates barriers to fires spreading locally. If you look at an aerial photo map of the larger cities, it’s easy to see how much fuel there is for wildfires to start up and become impossible to douse.<\/p>\n That happened with the Great Chicago Fire, which started on October 8, 1871 near the O’Learys’ barn on the South Side and quickly went out of control, with the hundreds of wood frame houses and shops, and taverns selling alcohol to support it.\u00a0 (The cow had nothing to do with it.)\u00a0 There are stories of people seeing blue flames here and there, which would not be unusual considering that many people stored alcoholic beverages like beer and whiskey in their basements at that time.\u00a0 https:\/\/www.chicagocop.com\/history\/historical-events\/the-great-chicago-fire\/<\/a><\/p>\n The Peshtigo Marsh Fire in Wisconsin also started on October 8, 1871 occurred at exactly the same time as the Chicago Fire, and was the result of pure carelessness on the part of lumberjacks, who did not douse the trash fires they’d started, nor did they clean up the sawdust piles they’d produced during logging and trimming, leaving a fuel load that needed nothing but the right weather conditions to go out of control. And the weather was, in fact, perfect for it. The fire temperature at Peshtigo reached 2000F and the fire created “weather” on its own, allowing it to jump from the western bank of Green Bay to the Door Peninsula across the bay.\u00a0 https:\/\/www.history.com\/this-day-in-history\/massive-fire-burns-in-wisconsin<\/a><\/p>\n This is why I am happy to say that firefighters are one group of people for whose existence alone, I am eternally grateful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"