February 15, 2016

by: Ciara Leilani

Spiritually speaking, one cannot fight fire with fire. However in the natural, when firemen battle wild and ranging forest fires they have several methods of fighting against the threat. Some use a method known as Fuel Reduction and others use Back Burning. Fuel reduction is the targeted burning of bushland to control fire behavior. The idea is to reduce the intensity of subsequent fires at the same place by removing fine surface fuels such as leaf litter. Reducing these hazards increases the window of opportunity for fire fighters to control bushfires. Back burning is a technique utilized in controlled burning and during wildfire events. While controlled burns utilize back burning during planned fire events to create a “black line”, back burning or backfiring is also done to stop a wildfire that is already in progress. Back burning is a way of reducing the amount of flammable material during a controlled burn or wildfire by starting small fires along a man made or natural firebreak in front of a main fire front. It is called back burning because the small fires are designed to ‘burn back towards the main fire front’ and are usually burning and traveling against ground level winds. Continue reading “Fighting the Fire of Offense”