Lessons learned save lives, preserve forest in blazing summer western wildfire season | Aviation International News

Lessons learned save lives, preserve forest in blazing summer western wildfire season

Some forest fires start with a blast of jagged lightning, incinerating the dry timber and flinging the flaming fragments into the tinder-dry underbrush fro

By Bill Wagstaff

October 8, 2007

Some forest fires start with a blast of jagged lightning, incinerating the dry timber and flinging the flaming fragments into the tinder-dry underbrush from which flames soon reach skyward.

Others ignite for more perverse reasons, the same ones Smokey the Bear warned us about when we were kids–campers, careless with fire. Smokers under the erroneous impression that all the world is their ashtray. And, even less understandable, from fires deliberately set in natural areas, set by people for whom the sight of fire ravaging a vista of untouched beauty brings with it some sort of thrill. Or, as in at least three cases in the last two years, set by rookie firefighters anxious to gain notoriety or experience with wildfires by starting their own, then starring in the extinguishment of same.

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