United States: Wildfires that spread so fast they outrun the efforts of fire crews trying to contain them: Such fires are occurring orders of magnitude more frequently across the western United States, a new study says.
Size is a fire characteristic, but velocity can be more significant than size when it comes to people and property, according to the findings of the scientists.
“It’s important to recognize we hear about megafires because of their scale but arguably the bigger threat is the speed of fire,” said study lead author Jennifer Balch.
As reported by the HealthDay, “Speed most of the time dominates the need for protection of individuals,” pointed out Balch a professor in geography at the University of Colorado Boulder.
We found that her team have published the result of their study on Oct. 24 in the journal Science.
The new study was motivated by the Marshall fire that ravaged over 1000 homes in Boulder County, Col., in December of 2021. It was not Lehman Brothers big, maybe 6,100 square acres when it was over, but high winds, low humidity allowed it to out run the firemen.
The perceived speed of the spread was supported by the Marshall Fire instance: It only took this fire less than an hour to jump to the next town, which was located 3 miles away, and forced the evacuation of over 10,000 residents, the research team found.
It’s not even the worse such fire recorded in history.
Consequently, in the past 2018 the Camp fire used wind and extremely dry weather to rapidly spread through and burn down the California town of Paradise. The fire destroyed over 18,000 structures, burnt over 150,000 acres and displaced 52,000 people. He also swept 85 people away who could not make it out in time.
Such cataclysmic events may be on the rise, the new study stated.
To estimate the growth rates of these 60K plus fires in the contiguous U.S. from 2001-20, Balch’s team obtained satellite data.