A look inside a forest fire

This video from National Geographic’s site shows the interior of a forest fire that was shot in Canada’s Northwest Territory during the International Crown Fire Modelling Experiment. I would not want to depend on a fire shelter to protect me during conditions like this.

On the National Geographic site, one of the comments asked, “Can someone tell why the heck they are burning this forest in the first place?”

Franco Nogarin replied: “We burn this forest so that we can know exactly how fire behaves under certain conditions. Nature burned the forest regularly as a natural occurrence before we (humans) settled everywhere, So its not hurting anything to burn these sections of forest in the name of Science. The benefits are that we we have very precise information about how wildfire works, We know what prevention measures work and which dont under specific conditions. These are not things we want to learn by trial and error in out of control wildfires 😉 ”

In addition to fire behavior experiments, quite a bit of other research is conducted during these fires, including measuring the effects on personal protective equipment, fire shelters, and various types of building materials.

Below is a still photo from the experiment.

Northwest Crown Fire Experiment
Northwest Crown Fire Modelling Experiment. USFS photo.

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Author: Bill Gabbert

After working full time in wildland fire for 33 years, he continues to learn, and strives to be a Student of Fire.

5 thoughts on “A look inside a forest fire”

  1. I saw the video and thought “time lapse”, but then the narrator said it was real time, and I was like “whoa …”. Obviously, I am not a WFF. But it gave me an idea of how quickly things can change …

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  2. My Fuels Management professor was one of the researchers who worked on this project, I remember watching these videos in class. Very interesting for someone who had only ever seen low intensity surface Rx fires.

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  3. A 15 min video that gives more information about these experiments. The first phase of these experiments took place near Fort Providence, Northwest Territories in Canada every summer from 1997 through 2000.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2pzaog0oVU

    One quote from the video related to fire shelters…

    “The experimental fires provided an opportunity to test and compare standard and experimental fire shelters and test the thermal performance of firefighters personal protective equipment. The size of safety and survial zones were also evaluated.

    Current PPE is designed to protect firefighters in moderate radiant heat environments. This equipment allows the firefighter time to escape or to deploy fire shelters. The analysis of the data will be used to improve PPE and to help to determine the size of safety and survival zones. These test will help to set international standards for fire shelter performance.

    In most of the tests the external temperatures were in excess of 1,000 Deg Celius (1,800 Deg F), well beyond the design limits of the standard Forest Service fire shelter.”

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  4. AWESOME. The Canadian fire science guys have been conducting ground-breaking research stuff for many years … and putting it to use. I worked (info) on a fire about a dozen years ago where we had crews from Canada setting up sprinkler systems — and I don’t mean in back yards, I mean hoselays and sprinklers on a big wildland fire. In some ways they’re way ahead of the U.S. on suppression options and fire behavior.

    High fives to the National Geographic pyrophotographer for this project!

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