Coping with wildfires

[corndog-44]

Imagine you and some friends are enjoying an afternoon in the foothills. You are in moderately open country, broken by handfuls of oak trees. The wind is whispering through golden, waist high grasses. As you descend around the curvature of one of the hills you notice below you a rather large and wide based column of smoke. The wind is blowing in your direction. What would you do?

Regardless of the situation, having some concept of what fires can do and preplanning, even informally, what you would do if you encounter a threatening fire will provide you with a distinct advantage if you are even unlucky enough to be in such a situation.

Wildfires are usually survivable...provided one makes the correct decisions and doesn't make a bad situation worse.

[Rick]

We have a thread on fires:

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1393&highlight=forest+fire

[Elkchsr]

In this situation since grass is extremely combustable, especially when the wind is blowing in your direction on an uphill direction

Depending on how far the column was away

1. If far enough, I would just hightail it out of there

2. If it was closer, I would fire off the hill ahead of me and follow the fire into the black

[corndog-44]

Sorry...didn't see it. Rick, I'm not going to search the entire forums whenever I want to make a post.

[Rick]

I know. It's sometimes difficult to find them even if you do. I happened to post that one so I knew it was out there.

[corndog-44]

Rick..This is a bad day for me...so, don't piss me off again. jkg. :D

[corndog-44]

In this situation since grass is extremely combustable, especially when the wind is blowing in your direction on an uphill direction

Depending on how far the column was away

1. If far enough, I would just hightail it out of there

2. If it was closer, I would fire off the hill ahead of me and follow the fire into the black

Elkchsr, I think the safest point in an uncontrolled fire is inside the burned area. If you are in an area with short fuels, you may be able to go through the fire line into the burned area behind it. Trails, roads and other barren landforms can provide open doors into the burn where you won't have to step through actual flames. It will be hot and smoky there, but you will have avoided the intense, killing heat of the fire front.

[Elkchsr]

waist high grasses

This is an extreme amount of flashy fuels

This will put flame lengths to about 10 feet

With an uphill slope, even running down hill thru it, you don't want to take the chance of a stumble in uncontrolled smoke and heat

Each person in this type of scenario will react differently and it's one of those situational exercises

This scenario was actually a real life event and it happened on the "Man Gulch Fire" with some Smoke Jumpers

Interesting read and very famous

I quick search on the internet will show you what I mean

There were a number of deaths in this case and a few that lived

You may want to go thru the case study and see what the right answer would be in the situation you mentioned above... :)

[corndog-44]

I did a search and I went through the Mann Gulch Fire case study; at the time the escape fire technique had not been part of their training.

When Dodge realized that they would not be able to outrun the fire, he started an escape fire and ordered everyone to lie down in the area he had burnt down. He later claimed he had never heard of such a fire being set, it just seemed "logical", and it was thought to be an on-the-spot invention. However, plains Indians had used the technique to escape grass fires and it had been written about by authors in fiction stories in the 1800s.

To avoid being trapped by a wildfire should a person take note of which way the wind is blowing. Try to stay upwind and/or down-slope from the smoke until you can be sure that you are safe?

[Elkchsr]

Good! :)

You did do a little research; this is one of the big case studies we talk about almost every season

When you mentioned your scenario, I though you were asking a question out of the play book to see if any of us were paying attention

One of the other things you didn't mention about it though, is a number of people tried to outrun this fire in a couple different directions and just didn't make it

Good thing about grass, its energy is release pretty quickly

Word of caution though, don't wait to long to get a fire started, the higher fire will create a draft which will bring the lower one up to meet it at a much faster rate (works just like a draw in a chimney)

Unless you’re trained to know what to look for and what to do around wildland fires, one should just vacate the area until its safe

A diurnal wind shift, new front coming in or any other number of weather events can get one into trouble in a hurry