1/5/2024 0 Comments Instaling Forest FireWhen one house ignites, suddenly there’s a source for more flame in the neighborhood. They land on roofs, in vents, on fences, on firewood piled next to homes. They can travel propelled by the wind four miles or more if conditions are right. The vast majority of the time, it was embers, lofting through the air. The cause of the devastation, he found, almost always wasn’t the wall of flames emerging from the forest. So Cohen focused on solving this mystery: if the forest fire itself wasn’t burning homes, what was it?Īs time went on, more fires burnt communities, and Cohen studied the ruins. Homes were burning, he found, as much as a half mile ahead of the actual flames. But the data on the ground didn’t add up to the picture. He’d assumed that the massive fire front had hit the edge of town, sending homes up in flames. But he cut his teeth on California’s 1980 Panorama Fire, which swept through more than 300 homes, killing four people. In the early 1980s, nobody was thinking much about wildfires burning homes. Retired fire scientist Jack Cohen’s work with the Forest Service revolutionized how we think about how wildfires destroy communities-and what we can do about. Those dramatic images can leave us feeling powerless in the overwhelming force of fire. Driven by a changing climate, a century of forest mismanagement, and more development in fire–prone areas, devastating fires are becoming the norm. But the factors that created it-heat, drought, and wind-make fires like this one a possibility across much of America. More than 100 died from the flames.Ī wildfire on a Hawaiian island might appear at first glance like an anomaly. The blackened cars and homes and lawns in the images circulating after the Maui wildfires were dramatic, and rightfully so: It was the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century.
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