How do Brush Fires Start?
By Noah Bergren on April 10, 2012, 10:10am Last modified: May 2, 2013, 3:47pm
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How Do Brush/Wildfire's Start?
-To start off with, there are many natural causes of wildfire's, including, lightning, volcanic activity, and combustion randomly. There are numerous causes, types and ways these fires can start, and rapidly spread, but primarily boils down to low humidity, (aka, very dry weather), and windy conditions to fuel the fire.
-As an example, when you or wind blows on a campfire- if you have ever had a campfire- most times the wind will fuel the fire even further to spread and grow in the direction the wind is coming from, within your bbq or fire pit of course- but in the case of open fires in forests/residential areas, they are not contained, and can sometimes spread easily.
-What we have recently seen on the news are more commonly called "Brush-Fires," not "WildFires," which are 9 times out of 10 caused by human error.
-The foundations of a brush fire can be compiled into something called "The Fire Triangle." It is a simple way of understanding the ingredients of fires. First, Heat is responsible for the initial ignition of the fire, and also to maintain it. Heat can also allow the fire to spread by removing/evaporating moisture from nearby fuel, such as trees/wood. Fuel is required, or simply any combustible substance, which can be categorized by the moisture content, size, shape, and quantity of the substance. For instance, a type of fuel would be wood from trees, or twigs/branches on the ground. Finally, Oxygen is required, and as a matter of fact, fires only require 16% concentration of oxygen in the air to burn. However, thankfully air contains around 21% oxygen, which helps the chemical processes that occur in wildfires. When the fuel burns, it reacts with the oxygen in the air releaseing heat, which can generate things called combustion products; which is known as a process called oxidation.
-In many countries/areas of the world, fires can be started by lightning, like in Africa. However, in the United States, primarily these are caused by the evaporation of liquid water (moisture) from soil/plants. Then when the balance of this is not naturally equal, plants dry out, and when this occurs release a very flammable gas named ethylene, which becomes all over the place, and can rapidly be ignited.
-This is just one of the many ways brush/wildfire's can start, which mainly all simmer down to Very Low Humidity- (Dry Weather), Breezy/Windy Conditions, and Not much water precipitation.
Also, some NWS Alerts for the potential of natural fires may include, Fire Weather Watches, or a Red Flag Warning.
-The Illustration below represents how brush fires can form and spread rapidly.
(Illustration above from Christophe Dang Nqoc Chan)
Should we bother worrying about this? Are brush fires really that common in Connecticut? Check out our brush fire 101 HERE.
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