Twenty-five years of research show what it takes to fuel wildland firefighters through an average day, and the toll the long seasonal work takes on their bodies.
Dry, windy conditions have fueled destructive wildfires in Texas, Florida and other states in 2022. Understanding these terms can help people in fire-risk areas prepare.
Satellites captured the tree loss from Hurricane Michael in 2018. This is where fires were burning in 2022.
Forwarn/USDA Forest Service
Birds will shriek and dive at each other over food, territory or mates, but only a small number of species sport actual weapons. The reason: Flying matters more for their survival than fighting.
William Deverell, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Elizabeth A. Logan, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The US has learned that it cannot suppress its way to a healthy relationship with fire in the West. That strategy failed, even before climate change proved it to be no strategy at all.
A photographer stands in a rain of flaming embers during a fire in California in 2019.
Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
More than 40 fire scientists and forest ecologists in the US and Canada teamed up to investigate why wildfires are getting more extreme. Climate change is part of the problem, but there’s more.
Satellites can quickly detect and monitor wildfires from space, like this 2017 fire that encroached on Ventura, California.
NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens
Satellites can already spot a new fire within minutes, but the information they beam back to Earth isn’t getting to everyone who needs it or used as well as it could be.
Sampling wildfire smoke sometimes means sticking a tube out the window of an airplane.
Brett Palm/University of Washington
Thousands of chemical compounds in wildfire smoke are interacting with each other and sunlight as the smoke travels. For people downwind, it can become more toxic over time.
Even if the proper infrastructure is implemented, it’s hard to say what course of action could possibly extinguish a fast-moving rural bushfire within an hour.
Prisoners clearing vegetation to prevent the spread of a wildfire in Yucaipa, California.
David McNew/AFP via Getty Images
Relying on incarcerated workers in emergencies such as the wildfires ravaging parts of the US is a cheap alternative for states. But what protections are there for prisoners?
The health impact of wildfire exposure depends in part on the fire itself and how much smoke a person breathes in, how often and for how long.
AP Photos/Noah Berger
Wildfire smoke makes it harder for firefighters’ bodies to fight off viral invaders. But firefighting conditions make the usual protective measures nearly impossible.
I entered firefighter school at 23 and thought I was hard enough to withstand anything thrown at me. Fourteen years later, I can say firefighters are not indestructible.