Wildfires

What are Wildfires?

Wildfires are basically like fires that spread quickly throughout a forest or any greenland. They can start from one direction and then go to another any second. An average wildfire could spread around 40 to 80 acres.

How have Wildfires affected our earth?

Wildfires have affected a lot, such as wildlife, vegetation, and infrastructure. Some of the biggest wildfires have a lot to recover from their wildfires. Let's take Australia's biggest fire in 2019, Australia had to recover around 117 million hectares. 3 billion of their animals have died, and if you didn't know that Australia has some of the unique animals in the whole world. And with all that smoke, it could affect us humans, which can cause cancer, heart diseases, and diabetes. Wildfires haven't just affected people and our land, it also affects our water supplies. From the burnt trees, there could be ashes and the wind can blow the ashes into the water and it could cause loss of drinkable water, fishing, and irrigation.

Why is this happening?

Most of the wildfires are human-caused or caused by wildlife. According to the National Parl Service (NPS) around 85% of wildland wildfires are caused by humans. But people aren't the only cause of wildfires, some causes of a wildfire also include lighting, volcano eruptions, arson, car sparks, and discarded cigarettes. Climate change also is a part of some common causes of a wildfire, since it has been changing to higher temperatures and experiencing more drought in some countries.

How can we reduce wildfires?

Some simple methods are to report unattended fires, take out campfires when you are not using them, don't throw out lit cigarettes when walking or when driving in a car, and check the local forecast to see the fire safety alerts.

What is the Fire Triangle and how does it work?

Each wildfire has to have heat, fuel, and oxygen. How does that work exactly? Well, heat is sun, lightning bolts, and a lit-up match. The heat will go on the fuel (dry grass, trees, plants, etc.) and it will light up into fire. Oxygen (wind, air) will make the fire spread more throughout the land. It will get to a point where the fire is so big, it gets out of control, and then it could turn into a wildfire.