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Would more fire breaks even help with fires like this one? Here in Southern California, fires fairly regularly jump freeways, which are quite a bit wider than t
by JoshuaDavid 6y ago
Would more fire breaks even help with fires like this one? Here in Southern California, fires fairly regularly jump freeways, which are quite a bit wider than typical firebreaks, and our fires are usually just relatively low brush, not entire forests.
- genocidicbunny 6y agoWith a strong wildfire, you would need massive firebreaks to completely prevent them being crossed, but the point of most of them is to slow things down to the point of being controllable. To cross a firebreak, the fire has to throw lit embers far enough to ignite on the other side. If the firebreak is large enough, the amount of embers that make it is lower, and it becomes more possible to control them. We have no way to extinguish the heart of a wildfire. For example, notice that the airplanes and helicopters that are used for firefighting rarely dump their load over the heart of a wildfire -- they usually target the edges. So all our efforts are targeted towards controlling the edges of the fire, slowing it down and making it manageable, because that is all we can really control. Firebreaks are a layer of the defense, not the whole thing.