Natural fires. Abstract natural fires

Fires pose a great danger to the life, health and property of people. Fires in nature usually occur under conditions of prolonged and severe drought and windy weather. A fire raging in a forest is a terrible enemy of the environment. After all, it brings colossal losses and sometimes leads to human casualties. Peat fires cause irreparable damage to nature, the consequences of which will take decades to eliminate. The article will define the term “fire” and reveal the concept of this phenomenon in nature, in particular in the forest.

A few hours later, Barrett sits cross-legged on a large boulder, hands on his knees, with one transmitter in each of them. There were no new shots fired on the other side, and his firefighters restored the fire line. It could very easily have happened the other way around. A helicopter passes, its orange bucket floating above us like a comet drifting behind. Justin Bone, one of Barrett's lieutenants, looked at him and nodded: "We're spending millions on 600 hectares," he says. Can fire department salaries in the city be paid with this money?

Definition of fires

A fire is a combustion process that is uncontrollable, occurs outside a special source, causes material damage and poses a danger to human life and health. This is not necessarily an open flame; sometimes only incandescence and smoldering occurs. The definition of the concept of “fire” assumes that such a combustion process is capable of independently spreading beyond the boundaries of the places that are intended for starting and maintaining a fire.

It might as well flood the dollars. Like Barrett, Kostya loves his job. He shares, like many others, the belief that trying to fight all fires is lost game. Bone advocates a different strategy called wildfire management, which controls some fires but allows for gradual clearing of forests, eliminating fuels. North American Indians burn forests and fields to create hunting habitat and clear them. Many plant species benefit from periodic treatment.

Bone points his finger into the yellow pine forest. With their thick, resilient bark, they can survive all but the worst fires. Other pins need fire to play; their cones are embedded in a waxy resin that must be melted by heat to release the seeds.

The characteristics that necessarily accompany this phenomenon are the following:

  • combustion;
  • gas exchange;
  • heat exchange.

Depending on the location of the fire, the classification of fires assumes the following types:

  • industrial;
  • household;
  • natural.

A prerequisite for a fire to occur is the presence of the following components:

While the fire burns dead trees and living plants, it also releases nutrients into the soil. This is critical in dry areas where decomposition will continue for decades in the absence of fire. Not all fires can burn unchecked, but the environmental argument raised by this idea is compelling. Staying is the future, man,” Bones says. We must learn to let things burn. Lucky is the star of the constellation of lights. As they burn, other fires follow thunderstorms through Idaho and into Montana.

Others are born where the wind is right and the land is dry and dry. On satellite maps The West looks cancerous, with red spots. In Missoula, Montana, Mark Phinney follows them from his office at the Missoula Fire Science Laboratory. He worked as a crewman for the fire brigade and could have become a professional firefighter like Barrett, but when he was in college, someone noticed that he was good at math. Now he spends a lot of time with virtual lights.

  • ignition source;
  • oxidizer;
  • flammable materials or substances.

Fire zones

The definition of fire assumes that such a phenomenon, regardless of its type, occurs in a certain space. This area can be divided into three zones:

  • active combustion zone;
  • heat affected zone;
  • smoke zone.

The active combustion zone is the part of the space in which flame, smoldering or hot materials are directly present. In a flaming (homogeneous) fire, the boundary of this area is usually considered to be the surface of the flaming material and a thin layer of fire that glows. If the combustion is flameless (heterogeneous), then this zone is defined by the hot surface of the smoldering substance.

Recently, the federal government has begun using a computer modeling program that has advanced our understanding of how small fires become monsters and how we can combat them. You can't know fire without playing with it, says Phinney. The three main components that lead to fire are weather, soil and fuel.

Phinney's program, called Fire Spread Probability, is the latest attempt to decipher these forces as they interact. It can simulate thousands of climate scenarios based on years of data recorded. Explains local topography and fuel type: dense strips of trees, grass or chaparral, remnants of logs.

The heat impact zone refers to the space around the active combustion area, where heat exchange occurs between the surface of the fire and nearby materials and structures. The temperature here reaches values ​​that are dangerous for people and surrounding objects. A person cannot be in this area without special thermal protection.

He then creates a map showing how the fire might move through the landscape. The simulation may take several hours. Finally, the card emerges from Finny's printer, covered in multi-colored ink. Some drought-stressed pine trees near a fire may be 80% to 100% burned; It's red on the map. A wet meadow, elsewhere, will have a 5%-20% chance of being blue. Fires tend to grow in elliptical shapes, which is why the map is covered in rainbow circles, like a multi-colored jersey.

As the fire moves, maps are updated and delivered to commanders, helping them decide which areas are most likely to burn and where they can best execute their forces. All those who fight with fire marshals, firefighters, etc. - They heard about Finney and his program.

Smoke zone is a space that is adjacent to the area of ​​heat exposure, and where people cannot be without special eye and respiratory protection. In such an area, firefighters' actions are difficult due to lack of visibility.

Below we will give a definition of a fire that occurs in the natural environment.

Definition of wildfires

A natural (landscape) fire is a combustion process that is uncontrollable, occurs spontaneously and spreads in the environment. Occasionally, such a phenomenon occurs as a result of a lightning strike, a meteorite fall, or a volcanic eruption, but the main reason is human actions. Due to deliberate arson or natural fires occur. The definition of this phenomenon distinguishes between the following types of fires:

The Yoko Lakes Burn is caused by lightning in the brown hills of Western Montana. It steals secretly for several days, feeding on rotten wood and dry bushes. By the time one notices it, it's out of control on a wild Friday. Observers watch the fire explode from 4 to 120 hectares in just 20 minutes. By Saturday evening it was heading into Seeley Lake, forcing the evacuation of about 675 homes.

For a time, Yoko becomes the most important flame in America's flames, a magnet for firefighting resources. Six days ago, it was longer than Manhattan. On the edge of Seeley Lake, Patricia Rerick and Ralph Schurman have an hour to pack. They can see the flames on the pod. Try to guess the consequences of the disaster. This won't happen. We'll be back in a few days. They put their three dogs in their nests, produce food for them, take some papers and get stuck in the truck.

  • Forest fires;
  • arrays;
  • peat fires and organic fossil fires.


Among the listed types, there is one that is the most common and brings huge losses. These are forest fires.

Definition of forest fires

Forest fires are the burning of vegetation, which is uncontrollable and spontaneously spreads across the territory of the massif.

After a few days, they return to a crater full of twisting metal, surrounded by blackened fingernails. A cold refrigerator, bent to the ground. They are running around. Crawling underfoot, with the sound of thin ice cracking. Ralph masters the art of identifying mutilated relics. "What is this, dear?" Patricia picks up the burnt object.

A cocoon of clay rising from the pile, dirty soot but intact, a gift from Ralph's mother. The soot particles flicker, beautifully, like genes. Part of the landscape that surrounds the couple's home is carbonized and dead, the corpses of trees with smoke hanging gray between them. Some are green and lively, untouched meadows, some are untouched pine trees.

There are two main reasons for this phenomenon:

  • Natural factors. This could be a lightning strike or spontaneous combustion of dry vegetation or peat.
  • These include planned cleanup fires, deliberate or accidental fires, or simple failure to follow fire safety rules.


But the neighbors' houses survived. Why us? The firefighters assured us several times. They said they would throw fire retardants around her. The firefighters were probably young. Older people tend not to make promises. The Jocko Lakes Burn burned approximately 1,000 hectares and cost more than $30 million.

It looked great at the time. Last fall, for three weeks, fires engulfed the southern state. They fought, retreated and retired. They couldn't do much except resist the sweat to save the houses and hope the wind would stop. More than a thousand people were evacuated and more than a thousand houses were destroyed.

On this moment the probability that such a forest fire will occur due to any natural factors is approximately 20%. The main cause of forest fires is still human activity.

The definition of a fire that develops in a forest area involves classification depending on the speed of spread and the nature of the fire.

Newspapers and television are full of photographs of the disaster. Clouds of visible smoke in space battled above Pacific Ocean. If the nation was shocked, most experts were not. "If someone was surprised, it was because they were young or inexperienced," says Jack Cohen, a federal fire scientist who has lived for decades in Southern California, where he often returns to study the civilized wild interface. .

Cohen names other unusual wildfires in California. Oakland - Berkeley Hills The fire environment in this state is significantly different from the rest of the West. Fires in southern California start and usually spread into chaparral areas, with many of the shrubs and trees releasing highly flammable resins, all well suited to fire and ready to burn.

Classification by speed of propagation

An important characteristic of forest fires is the speed of their spread. According to this indicator, such fires are classified as follows:

  • weak;
  • average;
  • strong.

For the weak forest fire Characteristic propagation speed does not exceed 3 meters per minute. For an average fire, the value of this indicator varies from 3 to 100 meters per minute. And strong forest fires are characterized by a spread speed above 100 meters per minute.

In general, fires are caused directly or indirectly by people. The fires become ferocious because the Santa Ana winds - California's seasonal winds - act like giant circles. When they beat the Winds, Santa Ana, California often burns. This region is also an extreme expression of our tendency towards fire. California is the most populous state, growing by about 10 million people every 20 years. Most of The south is extremely crowded.

Houses clutter the corrugated landscape. Factors that once held colonization back - such as little water and isolation - are no longer relevant. Americans were given more and more freedom, even encouraged to spread and choose land based on vision rather than logic.

Classification by nature of fire

Forest fires, depending on the nature of the fire, are classified as follows:

  • grassroots;
  • riding;
  • underground (peat).

A ground fire is a fire that spreads through the lower tiers of trees and shrubs, litter, leaves and branches that have fallen. The majority of fires begin with this type. Further, when certain conditions are created, a forest fire transforms from a ground fire into a surface or underground one.

Cohen has maintained this trend for more than two decades. He has a deep sense of irony and laughs at his own irritability, accumulated over the years of watching people ignore the power of fire and repeat the same mistakes. After the fall fires, he returned to California and woke up again. "To be honest, the escape ladder was weird," he says. With all our technology, we are clearly incompatible with the environment in which we live.

Cohen is an expert on home shooting. If you look around the area after a big fire, he says, one of the most striking details is the green, untouched vegetation that often remains amidst the ashes. This is a sign that the fire may not have burned the trees or chapparal; instead, they lit each other up as sparks flew like windy viruses.


A crown fire is a fire that engulfs the forest canopy. In this case, the fire spreads through the treetops. This type of fire is typical of mountain forests. Strong winds contribute to the occurrence of crown fires.

The exact definition of a fire that occurs in the soil under forested areas will be given in the article below.

They landed on the roof or became stressed. They went through the vents in the ceilings. In crowded neighborhoods, houses are replaced by trees, acting as primary fuel. Homes don't have to be wood-burning, Cohen says, but can be built with tile roofs or fire-resistant boards. “There have been significant instances in California where communities did not burn and were not evacuated because they were fire resistant.”

Some communities in California require fire-resistant construction. Many others are not. "We have the ability to be compatible with fire," Cohen says. But we often choose not to do this. No amount of solitary activity will reduce fire or the damage it produces. Armed armed crews can reduce fuel, but too much land is exposed to vegetation.

Peat fires: definition

A peat fire is a fire that occurs naturally or drained due to overheating of its surface by the sun's rays or due to careless handling of fire by a person.

Also, the causes of an underground fire can be a lightning strike or overhead and ground fires. Their flame penetrates deep into the peat layer near the roots of trees and bushes.

Warm combustion, burning for a specific purpose - although risky - is a common method. It remains unclear if Americans will voluntarily refuse to move to fire-prone areas or accept the idea that wildfires can go unpunished. The best approach would be to consider all of these measures and apply them wherever they are appropriate.

It will also require an exemplary concert of government efforts and public will. In particular, Americans have refused to accept that no government or technological solution, no matter how sound or brilliant it may be, can prevent natural processes or destroy their ability to influence life. There the government does not try to protect all private property. Responsibility primarily lies with the owners. People are advised to evacuate well before natural fires arrive - when the weather predicts danger - and government programs train people in ways to make homes less vulnerable.

A peat fire can occur in the form of simple smoldering, when there is no ignition, or in the form of combustion with incoming masses of carbon dioxide. Such phenomena are difficult to detect. Often, smoldering peat reveals itself only by a slight emission of smoke from the soil. A long process of underground fire can cause repeated occurrence of ground fires.

Peat fires are classified depending on the number of fires and the depth of burning.

Classification of peat fires

Depending on the number of fires, peat fires are divided into the following types:

  • unifocal;
  • multifocal.

Single-source underground fires occur in the event of a lightning strike or careless handling of fire by a person. specific place. Multifocal are formed from several points of combustion of underground organic substances.

The classification of peat fires according to the depth of burning is as follows:

  • weak;
  • average;
  • strong.

A weak peat fire is characterized by a burn depth of no more than 25 centimeters. The average underground fire has a size of this indicator from 25 to 50 centimeters. A strong peat fire is characterized by a burn depth of more than 50 centimeters.

Conclusion

Fires, depending on the place of origin, are divided into industrial, domestic and natural. The space in which a fire occurs is divided into three zones: active combustion, thermal effects and smoke. In turn, they are further classified into forest and peat. The main reason for their occurrence is human activity. The definition of a fire that occurs in a forest area involves an additional classification based on the speed of spread. Depending on the nature of the fire, this phenomenon can be ground-level, overhead or underground. Peat fires are divided into types depending on the number of fires and the depth of burning.

Fire is an uncontrolled combustion that causes material damage, harm to the life and health of citizens, and the interests of society and the state.

Approximately 80% of all fires occur due to human fault due to violation of measures fire safety when handling fire, as well as as a result of using faulty equipment. It happens that fires occur as a result of a lightning strike during a thunderstorm.

A natural fire is an uncontrolled combustion process that spontaneously arises and spreads in the natural environment.

Wildfires are divided into forest and steppe fires.

Forest fire is a spontaneous or human-caused fire in forest ecosystems.

On the territory of the Russian forest fund, from 10 to 30 thousand forest fires are registered annually, often taking on the character natural Disasters. The bulk of the area covered by the fire was in the regions of Siberia and the Far East. In these areas, forest fire is a forest-forming factor that determines the structure and dynamics of the forest fund.

The most important characteristic of a forest fire is the speed of its spread, which is determined by the speed at which its edge moves, i.e. burning stripes along the fire contour.

Forest fires, depending on the area of ​​fire spread, are divided into ground fires, crown fires and underground fires (peat fires).
Ground fire is a fire that spreads along the ground and through the lower tiers of forest vegetation. During a surface fire, the forest floor, grass and shrub cover, undergrowth and undergrowth burn.

Ground fire most often occurs in deciduous forests, with the flame height reaching 1.5-2 meters, and the spread speed usually does not exceed 1-3 meters per minute, the fire temperature in the fire zone is 400-900 ° C. Ground fires are the most frequent and account for up to 98% of the total number of fires.

A crown fire is the most dangerous. It begins in strong winds and covers the crowns of trees. The fire moves through the crowns of trees, its spread speed in calm weather can reach 3-4 km/h, in windy weather - 25-30 km/h or more.

The conductor of combustion during crown fires is the layer of needles, foliage and branches of the crown space. The temperature in the fire zone rises to 1100°C. The wind carries burning sparks, which create new fires several tens or even hundreds of meters from the main source.

An underground (peat) fire is a fire in which the peat layer of marshy and swampy soils burns. It is characterized by a low advance speed (about 0.5 m/min). A characteristic feature of peat fires is the flameless combustion of peat with the accumulation of a large amount of heat. Peat fires are characterized by the fact that they are very difficult to extinguish. The cause (ignition) of a peat fire is overheating of the surface of a peat bog, drained or natural, when its surface is overheated by the rays of the sun or as a result of careless handling of fire by people.

The causes of fires in steppe and grain massifs can be thunderstorms, accidents of ground and air transport, accidents of grain harvesting equipment, terrorist attacks and careless handling of open fire. The most fire-hazardous conditions occur in late spring and early summer, when the weather is dry and hot.

Fire extinguishing methods

The simplest and at the same time sufficient effective way extinguishing weak and medium fires is to overwhelm the edge of the fire. For this, bunches of branches 1-2 m long or small trees, mainly deciduous, are used. A group of 3-5 people in 40-50 minutes can extinguish the edge of a fire with a length of up to 1000 meters.

When engulfing the fire does not give the desired effect, you can throw loose soil over the edge of the fire. To do this, it is best to use special equipment, but sometimes you have to do it manually. One person can cover about 20 meters of the fire edge in half an hour.

To prevent the fire from spreading further, earthen strips and wide ditches are arranged along the path of its movement. The strips should be free of vegetation and any other materials that promote combustion. When the fire reaches such a stripe, it stops.

Counter fire is widely used to fight fires, when another counter fire is created towards the moving shaft of fire. When these two shafts meet, the fire has nowhere to spread. When organizing a counter shaft, it is necessary to take into account the direction of the wind and the direction of fire spread.

If the fire could not be stopped and it is approaching locality, in addition to taking all fire-fighting measures, it is necessary to begin evacuating the population. The withdrawal or removal of people should be carried out in a direction perpendicular to the spread of the fire. In this case, you should move not only along roads, but also along streams and rivers, and, if necessary, along the water itself. It is advisable to cover your mouth and nose with a wet cotton-gauze bandage or towel.

Indirect signs of an approaching forest fire are:

Persistent burning smell carried by the wind;
foggy smoke spreading over the forest;
restless behavior of animals, birds, insects;
night glow, at one of the points on the horizon, gradually expanding to the sides.

If a fire is detected, you should:

Do not rush around and do not panic;
analyze the situation, determine the evacuation route, why climb to a high point on the ground or climb onto tall tree and look around carefully. Identify the boundaries of the fire, the direction and approximate speed of its spread;
shelter from fire should be on bare islands and shallows located in the middle of large lakes, on bare areas of swamps, on rocky tops of ridges located above forest level, on glaciers;
it is necessary to move away from the fire in the windward direction (that is, go into the wind), in a direction perpendicular to the spread of the fire, trying to bypass the fire from the side in order to go to its rear.

Rules of conduct in a fire:

It is necessary to clean up around you perhaps large area from leaves, grass and branches;
it is necessary to moisten the clothes generously, it is advisable to cover the mouth and nose with a wet cotton-gauze bandage or towel, remove all melting clothing;
get rid of flammable and flammable equipment; if possible, periodically wet dry areas of material on clothing;
burrow into wet soil;
wrap the head, limbs, open areas of the body with any non-flammable material, if possible moistening it with water, but not very tightly, so that in case of fire it can be removed instantly.

In dry seasons and in fire-hazardous places, special care should be taken when handling fire:

The place intended for the fire must be cleared of dry grass, leaves, branches and other forest debris;
do not light a fire near the overhanging crowns of trees, in young coniferous forests, among dead reeds and on peat bogs;
do not leave the fire unattended;
do not leave the resting place without making sure that the fire is extinguished;
in the steppe it is better to make a fire in areas of bare ground;
there should always be a fireman on duty near the fire;
If small fires occur, they must be extinguished immediately: pour water, cover with sand, earth, cover with pieces of tarpaulin, covering the access to oxygen, trample and knock down with wet rags or bunches of branches;
It is strictly unacceptable to set fire to a forest for the purpose of sending a distress signal.

The main types of injuries in fires are burns and carbon monoxide poisoning. When providing assistance, it is necessary, first of all, to extinguish the burning clothing of the victims, and apply sterile bandages to the burned surface. If people are affected by carbon monoxide, they should immediately remove them from areas of intense smoke and, if necessary, perform artificial respiration.

It should be remembered that emergencies may be accompanied by various infectious diseases that can be contracted by eating dirty and contaminated water, food, as well as by infection through damaged human skin, etc.