Understanding Wildfire Suppression

In the earth that we live in, man has had been blessed with the knowledge and tool of fire. It has helped man become a dominant species, and without it we would not be as populated as we are today. It has blessed man with its existence but in today's world, fire has become a more fatal problem. The problem is wildfires. According to the Bureau of Land Management, about 2,700 wildfires occur in an average year on the BLM's lands ("Fire Management…"). These wildfires pose a serious problem, and how to suppress them is vital to the understanding of our nation's fire risk.

Components of Fire

To fully understand wildfires it is very important to know what fire is and how it works. According to the Essentials of Fire Fighting, the compounds of fire are referred to as a fire tetrahedron. The fire tetrahedron consists of four parts: Fuel, Heat, Oxygen, and a Chemical Reaction (Hall 41). These four terms are applied to the components of wildfires very easily.

The fuel in nature is very abundant, it arranges from sawdust, pine needles, grass, bushes and trees (Bradford 48). According to Living with Fire, a pamphlet from the BLM, there are five zones of vegetation, common in the Southwest. The first zone is Grass, which contains grasses that can be very dry causing them to burn quickly, and be the carrier of fire to other types of vegetation such as bushes and trees. The second zone is Riparian. This zone contains a lot of brush, which creates an intense, and fastest spreading fire. The third zone is Pinion-Juniper Woodlands. The fourth zone is Ponderosa Pine Forest; this zone contains a lot of flammable materials located on the forest floor, such as pine needles. The last zone is Mixed Conifer; this zone is usually the densest ...

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... of the Interior. Bureau of Land Management. [Pamphlet] <A13.36/2:L74/2/2002>.

* Nelson, Bruce. Smokejumpers and Smokejumping. Buck Publishing. Fairbanks, Alaska. Feb. 16, 2003. <http://www.bucktrack.com/Smokejumping.html>.

* Piper, Jeannie, Susan Wells, Paola Farer. "Efforts to hold back flood waters continue in burn area." 9NEWS KUSA-TV. June 08, 2002. <http://www.9news.com/storyfull.asp?id=3638>.

* Rogers, Kelly. Personal interview. Colorado State Forest Service. 26 Mar. 2003.

* Wildfire Control. Department of Sustainability and Environment. Victoria, Australia <http://www.nre.vic.gov.au/web/root/domino/cm_da/nrecfoe.nsf/3d08e37a810f38b94a256789000ee6bb/c2feb4491d2ec94d4a2568e8000ad6f7?OpenDocument>.

* Wildfire Control: an introduction for rural and volunteer fire departments. Firewise. <http://www.firewise.org/pubs/wildfire_control/>.