- Author
- Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Title
- Wildland Fires: A Historical Perspective.
- Coporate
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, Emmitsburg, MD
- Journal
- Topical Fire Research Series, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1-3, October 2000
- Distribution
- For more information about Topical Fire Research Series contact: Website: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/nfdc/tfrs.htm AVAILABLE FROM: U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 16825 South Seton Ave., Emmitsburg, MD 21727. Telephone: 301-447-1000. Website: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/
- Keywords
- wildland fires | fire statistics | fire seasons | fire prevention | case histories
- Identifiers
- first wildland fire control program, established in 1885, prescribed extinguishing all fires. Since then, the policy has changed many times, such as allowing fires from lightning to burn as natural prescribed fires. The debate on whether to allow prescribed burning to lighten the fuel load or to allow mechanical thinning continues; human activity is 7 times more likely to be the cause of a wildland fire than that of lightning strikes; as more people build homes in wildland areas, the job of the wildland firefighter becomes more complex; primary classes of wildland fires are surface, crown, and ground, determined by the types of fuels involved and the intensity of a fire; selected historically significant wildland fires