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SYSK Selects: How Wildfires Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Good morning everyone. It's July eleven. What No, it's modern times,
0:07
Speaker 1: but this dates back to July eleven, and it is
0:11
Speaker 1: my select pick of the week. How Wildfires Work. This
0:13
Speaker 1: one's important. That's why I picked this one. Everybody. Wildfires
0:17
Speaker 1: are still happening all over the place every year. It
0:19
Speaker 1: seems like they're getting worse and worse because they are.
0:22
Speaker 1: So this is a good podcast to educate yourself on
0:25
Speaker 1: wildfires and how to prevent them, how to fight them,
0:28
Speaker 1: and how they get started in the first place. So
0:31
Speaker 1: enjoy How Wildfires Work. Right now, welcome to Stuff you
0:36
Speaker 1: Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
0:45
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
0:50
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant right over there, and this is stuff you
0:54
Speaker 1: should not That was my shatner. I told you I
0:59
Speaker 1: worked with him think on a podcast. Right, he was
1:02
Speaker 1: puffy and stuffed in a suit. He's nice though, Right,
1:05
Speaker 1: he was super nice. And heck, I uh, every time
1:09
Speaker 1: I'm wearing wear a suit, I'm puffy and stuffed in
1:11
Speaker 1: a suit. So I'm poured into my suits, poured in liquid.
1:18
Speaker 1: That's great. So, and that's absolutely not true. By the way,
1:22
Speaker 1: Chuck yes, Um, I have a couple of stories for you.
1:27
Speaker 1: I have a specific story for you. But you have
1:29
Speaker 1: this too, right, did I give you this? Yes? Okay?
1:32
Speaker 1: So um in uh two thousand two, Right, there is
1:38
Speaker 1: a guy who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs
1:42
Speaker 1: and he was a firefighter for them. Right. He went
1:47
Speaker 1: onto the Arizona Apache Reservation and he started a wildfire intentionally. Okay,
1:55
Speaker 1: So he's an arsonist. Yes, he's not an arsonist for
1:58
Speaker 1: fun or because he's crazy? Um? Or what was it? Uh?
2:01
Speaker 1: He was curious, highly curious. Remember that was a trade,
2:05
Speaker 1: that was trade curiosity setting fires. Um. He wanted work,
2:11
Speaker 1: all right. Leonard Greg Leonard Greg was his name. Um.
2:15
Speaker 1: He uh set this fire and unbeknownst to him, at
2:20
Speaker 1: the same time you do. There's a woman, um, who
2:25
Speaker 1: had run out of gas not too far away, right, um,
2:29
Speaker 1: And she saw that there was a news helicopter covering
2:33
Speaker 1: the fire that Leonard Greg had just said. She didn't
2:36
Speaker 1: know about either, but she didn't feel like walking, or
2:39
Speaker 1: she felt like she couldn't walk, so she set a
2:41
Speaker 1: fire to try to get the attention of the news
2:44
Speaker 1: helicopter so that it would come rescue her. So she
2:47
Speaker 1: didn't have to walk to go get gas. That's pretty
2:50
Speaker 1: amazingly awful. So, um, I guess her last name was
2:54
Speaker 1: chet is Key. Because the Rodeo Fire, which is what
2:59
Speaker 1: they all, the fire that Leonard Gregg's started, collided with
3:03
Speaker 1: the Cherisky fire, and um, it was a conflagration. Ultimately
3:10
Speaker 1: four hundred and sixties seven thousand acres burned, including four
3:16
Speaker 1: and it was the largest fire in Arizona's history. And
3:19
Speaker 1: this is two thousand two. So Greg, I don't know
3:21
Speaker 1: what happened to the woman, but Greg was found guilty
3:24
Speaker 1: of arson since the ten years in order to pay
3:27
Speaker 1: twenty eight million dollars, which as an occasional firefighter for
3:30
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I would imagine he didn't have. Yeah,
3:33
Speaker 1: when that never happens. You always see that, like their
3:36
Speaker 1: awards so and so this, and they just don't pay.
3:38
Speaker 1: It's just like a symbolic award. I guess right, you'll
3:42
Speaker 1: know you'll never make more than fifty of your wages
3:44
Speaker 1: again kind of thing. Yeah, But what's crazy is not
3:48
Speaker 1: just that this lady set this fire because she wanted
3:51
Speaker 1: to get the attention of a news copter, or that
3:54
Speaker 1: this guy set a fire because of a desire to
3:58
Speaker 1: get work to put the fire out. Yeah, but because
4:01
Speaker 1: they're not the only people who have done stupid stuff
4:04
Speaker 1: like this. They follow in a long, grand tradition of
4:08
Speaker 1: people who have set wildfires for all sorts of different reasons,
4:13
Speaker 1: and a lot of them to get work. Yeah, you
4:16
Speaker 1: have a list here. And of course we're not we're
4:18
Speaker 1: going to praise the firefighters, not like we're saying a
4:20
Speaker 1: lot of these firefighters starting fires. But it does happen
4:22
Speaker 1: more than you would think. I imagine we'll probably throw
4:26
Speaker 1: some more out later on. But first, chuckers, right, let's
4:30
Speaker 1: get to wildfires, how they work, what affects them. The
4:36
Speaker 1: fire triangle. Yeah, we should probably start with the fire
4:39
Speaker 1: triangle because it relates to not just forest fires or wildfires,
4:45
Speaker 1: but all fires. All fire Josh requires three things. Um
4:51
Speaker 1: fuel obviously to burn air to get oxygen to the fire,
4:55
Speaker 1: so you know that we all knows. We all know
4:58
Speaker 1: that makes the fire burn hot and bigger. And then
5:01
Speaker 1: the heat source to bring the fuel to the ignition
5:04
Speaker 1: temperature to begin with. And they call that the fire
5:08
Speaker 1: triangle and the goal of a wild firefighter, and I
5:12
Speaker 1: guess probably more so a wild firefighter is to remove
5:16
Speaker 1: one of those three components from the scene, and that
5:19
Speaker 1: will give them a better chance of extinguishing the fire. Yeah,
5:22
Speaker 1: if you can bring the temperature down, or starve the
5:24
Speaker 1: fire of oxygen something, or get rid of the fuel. Yeah,
5:29
Speaker 1: all three of those things have to exist. And the
5:31
Speaker 1: reason why, Like, if you look at wood as a
5:33
Speaker 1: fuel would as it pertains to fire is just a
5:37
Speaker 1: um solid store of hydrocarbons that are released when the
5:42
Speaker 1: wood is heated to the flash point, to the flash
5:44
Speaker 1: point um, and those hydrocarbons at the flash point bind
5:48
Speaker 1: with oxygen in the air and it combusts thanks to
5:52
Speaker 1: the spark thanks to the heat. Yeah, and the flash point.
5:55
Speaker 1: Everything has a flashpoint. Apparently everything will burst into flames
5:59
Speaker 1: at some point. Like Ferret Hype four fifty one is
6:01
Speaker 1: supposed to be the flash point of books. Yes, right, yes,
6:04
Speaker 1: which is very cool. Title woods flash point is um
6:08
Speaker 1: five hundred and seventy seventy two degrees fahrenheit three hundred
6:13
Speaker 1: if you're into celsius, if you're into that kind of thing,
6:16
Speaker 1: and uh, that's when would will burst into flames. Yes. Um,
6:21
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of just quick stats here about
6:24
Speaker 1: five million acres of woodland burn every year in the
6:27
Speaker 1: United States, and I got a different set that it
6:29
Speaker 1: was one point two million. But then I looked I
6:31
Speaker 1: saw that that sat Yeah, I looked at the past
6:34
Speaker 1: decade five point nine million, five point to nine point three,
6:38
Speaker 1: nine point eight, eight point six eight four or seven
6:41
Speaker 1: three and seven, So that's about five. So I trust
6:44
Speaker 1: that one. And that is dude. In two thousand nine,
6:47
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, let's go to two thousand and six, there
6:49
Speaker 1: were ninety six thousand three five fires wildfires in the US.
6:55
Speaker 1: It's a lot of wildfires, isn't that crazy? And what's
6:58
Speaker 1: crazy is that four So those are started by human activity? Yeah,
7:03
Speaker 1: a little more than four fasts And that's nuts. Like,
7:06
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a whole thing called lightning season, right
7:10
Speaker 1: that when combined with this, um, this type of weather
7:13
Speaker 1: called fire weather, which is very very dry, maybe drought
7:16
Speaker 1: like conditions UM during warm summer months when it's very
7:20
Speaker 1: hot out um. And all it takes is like apparently
7:23
Speaker 1: like a train wheel causing a spark off of off
7:28
Speaker 1: of the rail into some tinder and then bayam, you've
7:30
Speaker 1: got a wildfire. UM. But even all those uh, don't
7:36
Speaker 1: account for more than a fifth of wildfires. The rest
7:40
Speaker 1: are like people throwing cigarettes out or looking for work
7:43
Speaker 1: is firefighters, or not putting out their fire when they're camping. Yes,
7:47
Speaker 1: that's a big one to um. I have another couple
7:49
Speaker 1: of stats from FEMA. There are total there are a
7:52
Speaker 1: hundred and seventies six thousand intentionally set outdoor fires every
7:58
Speaker 1: year in the United States. And the lot of those
8:00
Speaker 1: I think, uh, they're prescribed burns, right. No, no, no,
8:04
Speaker 1: that that's like people acts of arson. Yeah, but it's uh,
8:09
Speaker 1: only you know a certain amount of those are wild
8:11
Speaker 1: I think sixty three are outdoor fires vegetation fires. So
8:15
Speaker 1: the others are like trash fires, rubbish fires. Yeah, exactly,
8:21
Speaker 1: all of them make smoky the bear weep. Yeah. True. So, um,
8:27
Speaker 1: there's fire weather, there's lightning season four fifths, so fires
8:31
Speaker 1: are started by humans more than four fifths, he said.
8:35
Speaker 1: We know about the fire triangle, right, so once combustion
8:39
Speaker 1: is started from whatever the sources, there's a lot of factors. Well, no,
8:45
Speaker 1: not necessarily. There's three large factors that combine too. I
8:51
Speaker 1: guess give us an idea of what's going to happen
8:54
Speaker 1: with this forest fire? Right now? Are these are these
8:57
Speaker 1: fuel characteristics are like how facet will spread. No, it's fuel, weather,
9:00
Speaker 1: and topography. Those are the big three. And then each
9:04
Speaker 1: of those kind of has a few subcategories. But the
9:07
Speaker 1: but fuel, the amount, in the type of fuel, the
9:10
Speaker 1: the type of weather that that's going on, like is
9:12
Speaker 1: it fire weather is it not? And in topography the
9:16
Speaker 1: lay of the land, like if it's a lake, that's
9:19
Speaker 1: not good topography for a forest fire. And I'm going
9:23
Speaker 1: to use forest fire and wildfire interchangeably. I didn't see
9:25
Speaker 1: anything that said that they're not one and the same.
9:27
Speaker 1: Well they are today at least forest fire just kind
9:29
Speaker 1: of rolls off the tongue a little more for me. Yeah,
9:32
Speaker 1: my thick tongue. Law said wildfire, And I keep saying
9:36
Speaker 1: wild flower to Jerry, is it wildflower or wide fire? Ye?
9:40
Speaker 1: Wide fire? I wanna go forest fire could be a
9:43
Speaker 1: wide fire, that's true. Huh uh. So fuel uh you
9:48
Speaker 1: need a fuel obviously to get the wildfire burning. In
9:52
Speaker 1: what they call the they call it a fuel load
9:56
Speaker 1: is the amount and it's a measured amount of fuel
10:00
Speaker 1: available per unit area and it's usually tons per acre.
10:04
Speaker 1: So they there they can actually they're good enough to
10:06
Speaker 1: guestimate that you like the biomass of like all this
10:08
Speaker 1: dry grass. Yeah, like they know, like, man, this is
10:10
Speaker 1: gonna be a bad one because we've got to you know,
10:12
Speaker 1: I don't have any numbers, but whatever fuel load in
10:15
Speaker 1: this area of the Colorado National Forest. And what's interesting
10:18
Speaker 1: is is, um, you would think that the fuel load
10:22
Speaker 1: if if you do it in weight, because it's tons
10:24
Speaker 1: per acre, right, that depending on the type of fuel,
10:28
Speaker 1: like if it's grass, if it's lighter, that it's going
10:31
Speaker 1: to burn more quickly because it has less of water. Yeah, right, true,
10:35
Speaker 1: because that's a characteristic of the type of fuel, is
10:38
Speaker 1: how how much moisture it has in it. Yeah. And
10:41
Speaker 1: the density like twigs obviously will burn faster for two reasons.
10:46
Speaker 1: One is because there's it's not as densely packed, because
10:49
Speaker 1: which will give it more oxygen. Yeah, there's less surface area. Yeah.
10:52
Speaker 1: And the second is it's smaller and it dries out
10:55
Speaker 1: more quickly. Yeah, it's not like drying a tree or
10:57
Speaker 1: a log. It's got to take a long time to
10:59
Speaker 1: dry out, right. And then the same goes for density
11:01
Speaker 1: with like say tots of pine straw, right if it's
11:05
Speaker 1: very densely packed. Um, it's going to retain moisture in
11:08
Speaker 1: the middle, which makes it harder to burn. Anytime you've
11:10
Speaker 1: ever set pine straw on fire, you know, k it
11:13
Speaker 1: smokes a lot if you'd throw a big mess on
11:15
Speaker 1: your fire, right, But if it's kind of spread out,
11:18
Speaker 1: it's uh, it drives more easily and it lets more
11:21
Speaker 1: oxygen in between it, which is another need for fuel. Yeah,
11:25
Speaker 1: and a small fuel material they call flashy fuels. And
11:29
Speaker 1: they were like four fingered rings, right, and on a
11:32
Speaker 1: chemical level, they it varies on how long it takes
11:36
Speaker 1: these things to ignite as well, beyond the fact that
11:38
Speaker 1: it's just like more dense or bigger or more spread out. Right,
11:43
Speaker 1: Like when I go camping, I will dry out camp
11:46
Speaker 1: firewood beside the fire and you can hear it, says,
11:49
Speaker 1: you can see it. You can see the moisture sizzling
11:52
Speaker 1: from the log and then you just inch it closer
11:54
Speaker 1: and it'll just boom flash point. That's how it happens. Yeah.
12:23
Speaker 1: Oh another thing, josh um. As the fire pushes forward,
12:28
Speaker 1: it's what it's gonna be doing because there's so much
12:30
Speaker 1: heat associated with it and smoke, it's gonna dry out
12:34
Speaker 1: the stuff the fuel in front of it. So by
12:37
Speaker 1: the time it gets there potentially, I mean, that's why
12:39
Speaker 1: wildfire happens. By the time it gets there, it's already
12:42
Speaker 1: dry and ripe for the picking. Yeah, and it's just
12:45
Speaker 1: gonna keep burning and keep burning. There's nothing to stop
12:48
Speaker 1: it basically, that's right. It feeds itself. Um, something else
12:52
Speaker 1: that feeds it. So that was fuel, right. Yeah. The
12:54
Speaker 1: second category or of factor that really determines how wildfire
12:59
Speaker 1: is going to go is um weather. Yeah, big time.
13:03
Speaker 1: And you know when you think of weather, you think,
13:04
Speaker 1: I will you know, rain, snow, If it's raining, then
13:08
Speaker 1: of course the wildfire is going to go out. They
13:09
Speaker 1: point that out in here too. But yeah, I thought, yeah, okay,
13:12
Speaker 1: I thought, um Kevin went to a great Yeah, he definitely.
13:17
Speaker 1: He dotted his eye on that one, he did, because yes, obviously,
13:20
Speaker 1: if it's pouring down rain, it's going to keep everything moist.
13:24
Speaker 1: Or if it's been raining for a while, humidity helps,
13:26
Speaker 1: yeah big time. But the aspect of weather, um that
13:30
Speaker 1: probably has more of an effect than any is wind
13:34
Speaker 1: at ye. So you've got wind outside of the fire,
13:38
Speaker 1: which is going to push it along, push it in
13:40
Speaker 1: one direction or another. Well, it's very unpredictable. That's one
13:43
Speaker 1: of the things. The winds, especially the dry Santa Ana's
13:46
Speaker 1: in California. It's already hot and dry wind, so it
13:49
Speaker 1: might as well be fuel, right, Well, I guess it's
13:52
Speaker 1: sort of his fuel well traditionally, but it doesn't necessary
13:55
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily fuel, but it brings more oxygen to
13:58
Speaker 1: the fuel too. Yeah, exactly right. Um, so it pushes
14:01
Speaker 1: fire along. It's an oxygen delivery system. Wind is um
14:05
Speaker 1: and it doesn't. There's a guy who's interviewed in this article.
14:09
Speaker 1: His names Dr Terry Clark at the National Center for
14:12
Speaker 1: Atmospheric Research, and he's created this model called coupled Fire
14:16
Speaker 1: Atmospheric Dynamics. Pretty cool, and basically what he's doing is
14:20
Speaker 1: figuring out how fire interacts with the surrounding atmosphere and
14:25
Speaker 1: vice versa, because apparently they feed off of each other. Yeah,
14:27
Speaker 1: fire can create its own weather system and weather pattern. Yes,
14:32
Speaker 1: you've seen it before, Like in a really hot fire,
14:33
Speaker 1: these little tornadoes come up. It's a firewhirl right. Um,
14:37
Speaker 1: those can be enormous. It's basically like the heat from
14:42
Speaker 1: the fire creates a vortex, and the vortex is customarily horizontal,
14:47
Speaker 1: but if something gets under it, it can stand upright
14:50
Speaker 1: and it becomes a fire tornado that can throw the
14:54
Speaker 1: whole logs. I can throw a burning tree like a mile.
14:58
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a monster, and it can
15:00
Speaker 1: throw it a mile into where there previously was no fire.
15:04
Speaker 1: And that's why file uh forest fires are so hard
15:07
Speaker 1: to fight. One reason why they are because all of
15:08
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're fighting in on one front and you've
15:11
Speaker 1: seen them to leap from the tree tops, and all
15:13
Speaker 1: of a sudden, dude, it's on this side of the
15:15
Speaker 1: mountain now right. It's scary stuff and treetops specifically, by
15:19
Speaker 1: the way, that's a that's a type of fire onto itself.
15:21
Speaker 1: It's that's that's a crown fire, is what it's called.
15:23
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, there's a these uh fire whirls right,
15:28
Speaker 1: the fire tornadoes they don't necessarily have to follow that.
15:32
Speaker 1: That um, that process of starting out horizontally and standing
15:37
Speaker 1: up and then moving like a tornado. There's another thing
15:39
Speaker 1: called a hairpin fireworld. Is this the forward burst? Yeah?
15:44
Speaker 1: This is amazing. Basically it's like the fire develops so
15:48
Speaker 1: much I guess heat, it's vortexas do It's vortices do
15:53
Speaker 1: that it shoots forward like a flamethrower. And apparently these
15:57
Speaker 1: things are they get up to like sixties six feet wide,
16:01
Speaker 1: right yeah, Um, just they can shoot three hundred plus
16:04
Speaker 1: feet at a hundred miles an hour, just all of
16:08
Speaker 1: a sudden, like the fire just shot a hundred feet
16:11
Speaker 1: forward at a hundred miles an hour, and then in
16:13
Speaker 1: an instant, all of a sudden, your fire is going
16:15
Speaker 1: in a if not a different direction and additional direction.
16:19
Speaker 1: Right because tracking these things, predicting these things, it's we've
16:23
Speaker 1: figured out or Dr Terry Clark has figured out, um
16:25
Speaker 1: that it's not just the atmospheric conditions, it's the fire
16:29
Speaker 1: creating its own stuff, its own wind, yeah, and just
16:31
Speaker 1: moving from both of these living thing yea. And they
16:35
Speaker 1: call that spotting if if they if it tosses embers
16:39
Speaker 1: to another spot, they call that spotting. And if it
16:41
Speaker 1: if it starts a fire obviously right um. And then
16:44
Speaker 1: temperature also is another factor. If it's warm out hot, um,
16:49
Speaker 1: you know, obviously that's an extra sixty hundred degrees that
16:53
Speaker 1: the temper that the sun doesn't have to heat something
16:55
Speaker 1: up to. Yeah you know, yeah, you never that's why
16:58
Speaker 1: they burned mostly or most hot and wild during the
17:01
Speaker 1: day during the afternoon, um, California. Like, I had to
17:05
Speaker 1: get used to camping in California because in Georgia, George
17:08
Speaker 1: is like a rainforest man. It's like there's never any
17:10
Speaker 1: fire threat. No. Plus it's so muggy. Yeah, it is
17:14
Speaker 1: so muggy all the time. There's no way you couldn't
17:17
Speaker 1: start a fire if you want to. You can't even
17:18
Speaker 1: strike a match outside right now. But uh, well, I'm
17:22
Speaker 1: just used to camping with a great, big, awesome camp fire.
17:25
Speaker 1: But once I headed west into like Colorado and New
17:28
Speaker 1: Mexico and California, they have you know, every state park
17:31
Speaker 1: in national park you go to a national forest says
17:34
Speaker 1: have signs that say you know, fire risk um high,
17:37
Speaker 1: no fires at all, or you have to apply for
17:40
Speaker 1: a fire permit with the the camp camp rangers camp
17:44
Speaker 1: rangers forest rangers. And uh I had to get used
17:48
Speaker 1: to either sneaking my fire, which is not right in
17:51
Speaker 1: risking fine, or not having one at all, which thinks,
17:55
Speaker 1: why don't you just go apply for a permit? Well,
17:57
Speaker 1: sometimes it was the fire risk was so high you're
17:59
Speaker 1: not to have one at all, And I would still
18:02
Speaker 1: have one, and I probably shouldn't be saying that, but
18:04
Speaker 1: I'm super super careful. I didn't when I when I
18:07
Speaker 1: was living in the van for a little while. Um,
18:09
Speaker 1: I camped on the northern rim of the Grand Canyon
18:13
Speaker 1: and I started a fire, but I don't I didn't
18:16
Speaker 1: see any signs that said no fire or anything, but
18:18
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I could have totally missed it. Probably no
18:20
Speaker 1: one said anything, though. Yeah, and you know what, I
18:22
Speaker 1: was completely irresponsible for doing that. Just let me go
18:24
Speaker 1: on record and say that it was not the right
18:26
Speaker 1: thing to do, even though I was super careful, because
18:29
Speaker 1: accidents happened, and I could have easily been that jerk
18:32
Speaker 1: that like didn't see the ember get away that started
18:35
Speaker 1: a forest fire. So I want to say, I mean,
18:37
Speaker 1: if you spark from a train's wheel can start a
18:39
Speaker 1: forest fire, then yes, very easily a fire that you
18:43
Speaker 1: started start a forest fire. That was very good, Chuck,
18:46
Speaker 1: way to see o A. Well. I didn't want to
18:48
Speaker 1: sound like I was bragging about it, like, oh, I
18:49
Speaker 1: was super careful, so it was cool. This is it
18:51
Speaker 1: was not cool. There's this guy on Um, yeah, I
18:54
Speaker 1: didn't take care of breaking Okay, did you ever watch
18:56
Speaker 1: Malcolm in the middle. Oh yeah, um, there was this one.
18:59
Speaker 1: There was this one scene, um where the mom was
19:02
Speaker 1: telling the dad he was he was saying that she
19:05
Speaker 1: was giving him grief about the stories that he was
19:07
Speaker 1: telling his kids, and he's like their cautionary tales, and
19:11
Speaker 1: she goes cautionary tales doing him with It was so cool.
19:15
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that show for a long time. But like
19:17
Speaker 1: all shows when it's about kids, when they got a
19:19
Speaker 1: little too old, you know, all of a sudden, his
19:22
Speaker 1: voice is down. Well no, he he cashed out, like
19:25
Speaker 1: right about that time. He was like I'm out. Malcolm himself.
19:28
Speaker 1: He was like, I've I've got fifteen Porsches and I'm
19:32
Speaker 1: very happy. I'm done. Well, yeah, he went on to
19:33
Speaker 1: his big movie career. Yeah, that's right. Sorry Cranston. Though
19:41
Speaker 1: he's uh have a scene breaking bad. But it's supposed
19:43
Speaker 1: to be amazing, all right. The last thing, Josh is topography.
19:48
Speaker 1: That's what we talked about. A steep slope, it's gonna
19:51
Speaker 1: spread faster, usually spreads uphill. Even though leave it to
19:55
Speaker 1: Australia to do something weird. Dr Terry Clark says he
20:00
Speaker 1: as a case study in Australia, where the fire actually
20:03
Speaker 1: burned down a sloped mountain, which is pretty unusual. Yes,
20:07
Speaker 1: normally it burns up for a couple of reasons. The
20:10
Speaker 1: ambient wind um usually blows uphill. Um. The steeper the
20:16
Speaker 1: slope the better because the fire, the smoke and the heat. Well,
20:21
Speaker 1: for the fires concerned, it's like, give me a steep
20:25
Speaker 1: mountain because the fire would be standing almost upright then,
20:29
Speaker 1: and the smoke and the heat coming off the fire
20:31
Speaker 1: is um really drying out the fuel load ahead. So
20:36
Speaker 1: most of the time they burned upward up the mountain,
20:38
Speaker 1: and then they reach the crest and they're like, I
20:40
Speaker 1: should have thought this through because now I have to
20:42
Speaker 1: go down and I can't ye, which is good for
20:44
Speaker 1: fighting the fire, not good for the fire um they
20:49
Speaker 1: can besides burning all the vegetation, which is can be
20:53
Speaker 1: really bad. Uh. It can lead to things like erosion
20:57
Speaker 1: and mud slides later on because you mess with the
21:01
Speaker 1: with the ground like that and it's not stable like
21:03
Speaker 1: it once was. Yeah, I mean, like the one of
21:05
Speaker 1: the roles that roots a root system plays is holding
21:08
Speaker 1: the ground in place. And if you burn the tree
21:11
Speaker 1: and the roots system out, it's just soil and the
21:15
Speaker 1: nice heavy rain comes then and that very thing happened
21:18
Speaker 1: Josh and storm King Mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, two
21:23
Speaker 1: thousand acre forest burned and the underbrush burned on the
21:27
Speaker 1: steep slopes. And two months later they got a lot
21:29
Speaker 1: of heavy rain and it literally poured tons of mud
21:33
Speaker 1: and rock onto a stretch of Interstate seventy like engulfing cars,
21:38
Speaker 1: sweeping them into the Colorado River, all because of the
21:41
Speaker 1: fire months months ago. And we've seen one sides before.
21:44
Speaker 1: Remember Guatemala. Oh yeah, remember like down the mountain there
21:48
Speaker 1: was still that path. You could see the where the
21:49
Speaker 1: path came tree standing on this village where they'd never
21:53
Speaker 1: unearthed the people and it was like people's kids were
21:55
Speaker 1: running around. Yeah, it was so sad. Where we were
21:58
Speaker 1: standing was like six ft higher than it once was, right, yeah, alright,
22:01
Speaker 1: six at least. I would say that's awful. So, Chuck,
22:04
Speaker 1: if you want to put out a fire, well, first
22:07
Speaker 1: of all, they're beneficial, though we should say that at
22:09
Speaker 1: times burning the underbrush of a forest can prevent a
22:13
Speaker 1: larger fire later on, So they do have like prescribed
22:17
Speaker 1: burns like you were talking about, Chuck, I inadvertently started
22:20
Speaker 1: a book club by mentioning again recently, have you noticed
22:24
Speaker 1: a lot of people have been writing and saying like,
22:26
Speaker 1: thanks man, I'm starting yea, and they're like, what about Yes,
22:30
Speaker 1: it's another book that's a fake book though, Oh is it?
22:33
Speaker 1: It's yeah, that's the one where the guys like the
22:35
Speaker 1: Chinese made it to South America. Mexico wrote article about it,
22:40
Speaker 1: and I pilloried the guy. Okay, yeah, it's very he
22:44
Speaker 1: has very shaky, shaky evidence. That's fascinating stuff. But well
22:50
Speaker 1: have we not podcasted on that. Let's do it all right?
22:53
Speaker 1: I read that today and I was like, why haven't
22:55
Speaker 1: we done this yet? Oh, we can totally do it. Okay.
22:57
Speaker 1: I think it took a little while from me for
22:59
Speaker 1: the bitterness to like my mouth like after I wrote
23:01
Speaker 1: that one, because the guy was getting tons of pressed
23:03
Speaker 1: at the time. But anyway, anyway, anyone who's read knows
23:08
Speaker 1: that North America it was basically a managed forest, and
23:11
Speaker 1: one of the ways that it was managed prior to
23:13
Speaker 1: Columbus was through prescribed burns. Like it there. It is
23:18
Speaker 1: very beneficial. It burns away the underbrush so you have
23:22
Speaker 1: less potential for accidental fires. Right, Remember we talked about
23:25
Speaker 1: recessions are kind of like that um and the it
23:29
Speaker 1: gets rid of disease, provides nutrients in the soil um
23:34
Speaker 1: awesome show. After you'd like, you know, hit the peace pipe,
23:39
Speaker 1: just kick back and watch a forest fire go. So
24:06
Speaker 1: let's talk about putting these things out. Josher's. Uh. They
24:11
Speaker 1: have a couple of categories of the these elite firefighters.
24:16
Speaker 1: They're called hot shots and smoke jumpers. The hot shots.
24:19
Speaker 1: What's so funny, that's the names they give them. Yeah,
24:23
Speaker 1: that's pretty let's say that's pretty bad. Are alright? Hot
24:27
Speaker 1: shots They work in twenty person teams and they are
24:32
Speaker 1: trained there on the ground and they were trained to
24:34
Speaker 1: build mainly to build fire breaks. And that is when
24:38
Speaker 1: they strip the land of fuel ahead of the fire,
24:42
Speaker 1: or they will burn it ahead of the fire. Yeah,
24:45
Speaker 1: to stop it. There have you ever seen that? God's
24:47
Speaker 1: must be crazy too. No. The dude, the main dude,
24:51
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name. He um. There there's a
24:54
Speaker 1: brush fire coming like a prairie fire, savannah fire coming
24:58
Speaker 1: at the main characters, and they're about to be engulfed
25:01
Speaker 1: in it. And the main bushman runs and grabs like
25:05
Speaker 1: a piece of grass or whatever and sets fire to
25:09
Speaker 1: the grass behind them that they are running into and
25:12
Speaker 1: burns it and then basically creates a circle. It's a
25:15
Speaker 1: backfire firebreak, and they're all standing in the circle where
25:18
Speaker 1: there's no more fuel any longer. It's completely and utterly genius.
25:22
Speaker 1: Well it is. And it's also you have to be
25:25
Speaker 1: you have to really know what you're doing. You know,
25:27
Speaker 1: you have to put it in the exact right spot.
25:28
Speaker 1: I know that sometimes they'll do the firebreak and the
25:31
Speaker 1: fire will leap over that, and then that's kind of
25:35
Speaker 1: make you feel like, yeah, there's nothing we can do
25:38
Speaker 1: well in a lot of cases. I mean, it's like
25:41
Speaker 1: I remember, was it two years ago, was or maybe
25:44
Speaker 1: it was three years ago when they had all those wildfires,
25:48
Speaker 1: and uh, I remember thinking like what we can do medically,
25:50
Speaker 1: and like, we can, you know, put a man on
25:53
Speaker 1: the moon, but we can't stop a fire. And it's
25:56
Speaker 1: that out of control because it's so huge and overwhelming,
25:59
Speaker 1: very deep, thank you, not deep at all. Actually. And
26:02
Speaker 1: there's there's smoke jumpers, which are hotshots that jump out
26:05
Speaker 1: of airplanes, right yeah, and there's only a couple of
26:08
Speaker 1: hundred of them in the US, which I can imagine
26:11
Speaker 1: that's a really specialized job, and you have to be
26:15
Speaker 1: a tough mug to do that. That would be Hawing Long.
26:19
Speaker 1: He did in in Firestorm, I think he was. I
26:22
Speaker 1: didn't see it. Not many people saw it, actually, but
26:25
Speaker 1: I did copy the the description from IMDb. I thought
26:29
Speaker 1: it was just about like a firefighter and like forest fires,
26:33
Speaker 1: but of course, because it's Hollywood, they added some plot
26:36
Speaker 1: to it. Firefighter Jesse Graves has to save ornithologist Jennifer
26:41
Speaker 1: and other people in a forest fire. Like I thought
26:43
Speaker 1: that was it, but no, it was set up by
26:46
Speaker 1: the lawyer of a convicted killer, Earl Shay, who escaped
26:49
Speaker 1: from prison with several of his inmates, posing his firefighters
26:53
Speaker 1: to recover thirty seven million and stashed loot. So they
26:56
Speaker 1: were acting. They started the fire and purpose it was
26:59
Speaker 1: sort of like the guys who posed as UH ambulance
27:02
Speaker 1: drivers to get the dude out of prison. That sounds awesome, actually,
27:06
Speaker 1: I mean the plot description sounds pretty awesome. You can
27:09
Speaker 1: tell you hear like Howie Long, it's going to be awful,
27:13
Speaker 1: But like I'm sure the writer of that was like, okay, yeah,
27:18
Speaker 1: and then he hears it's gonna be Firestorm starring how
27:21
Speaker 1: he long, and he's like, I'm sure that the writer
27:24
Speaker 1: Alan Smithy was pretty psyched that that is project for
27:26
Speaker 1: a little while. So chuck, oh uh, you can fight
27:32
Speaker 1: a fire using an air corps, right, Oh yeah, that
27:37
Speaker 1: dropped fire retardant on the fire. You've seen the news
27:40
Speaker 1: footage the red stuff. Yes, Or they can drop tons
27:43
Speaker 1: of water and have you ever heard that urban legend?
27:47
Speaker 1: M oh yeah, but what is it? So there there
27:49
Speaker 1: is a forest fire somewhere we'll say California, and they
27:53
Speaker 1: put it out, and like six months later or whatever,
27:55
Speaker 1: some hikers walking through this area and looks up and
27:59
Speaker 1: notices that there's a scuba diver stuck in a tree, right,
28:03
Speaker 1: but the rebreather on and the the mask on and
28:06
Speaker 1: the flippers and everything, and um, he's dead. And the
28:11
Speaker 1: hiker can't figure out what's going on, and you know,
28:13
Speaker 1: leaves the forest and tell somebody about it, and they
28:15
Speaker 1: start doing some research and they figure out that he
28:18
Speaker 1: was scooped up by one of these planes that goes
28:21
Speaker 1: out to the ocean and like steps up a bunch
28:23
Speaker 1: of water and comes and dumps it on the totally
28:25
Speaker 1: not true, right wildfire. Now, the fire, that's a good one. Yeah,
28:29
Speaker 1: it is a good one. I hate it when you
28:31
Speaker 1: burst Urban Legends though, because it bursts so many bubbles
28:36
Speaker 1: right now, so it's so beneficial. Like, yes, I know
28:39
Speaker 1: it's stings right now, but in about forty five seconds,
28:43
Speaker 1: you're going to feel like a smarter person, right, that's true.
28:46
Speaker 1: We mentioned the fire retardant that is not just red stuff.
28:50
Speaker 1: It is um a chemical retardant containing phosphate fertilizer, and
28:54
Speaker 1: it cools down the fire slows it down. It's like, uh,
28:57
Speaker 1: it's main ingredient is water though, so it's like puper
29:00
Speaker 1: superwater as far as you know. I was thinking about
29:03
Speaker 1: when when I was reading about smoke jumpers. Um, the
29:07
Speaker 1: the human cannonball thing that DARPA came up with would
29:10
Speaker 1: be perfect for that. You could just be like to
29:13
Speaker 1: shoot a bunch of smoke jumpers into the like over
29:15
Speaker 1: the fire into where you want them. You don't need
29:18
Speaker 1: the parachutes or something. Yeah, I can't imagine a smoke
29:23
Speaker 1: jumper's job like landing in the middle of that stuff. Yeah,
29:28
Speaker 1: that's crazy stuff, amazing and um. We also want to
29:32
Speaker 1: give a shout out to always Great Movies starring Richard Dreyfuss.
29:36
Speaker 1: It was no always Oh, I thought you said, we
29:41
Speaker 1: always want to give a shout always remember. Yeah, that
29:44
Speaker 1: was a good movie. John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Richard dreyfuss Um,
29:48
Speaker 1: and that handsome dude who I don't know. Yeah, that's right,
29:52
Speaker 1: the guy that played the handsome guy. And it was
29:54
Speaker 1: a remake of I think a guy named Joe or
29:56
Speaker 1: something is h And I also I believe Audrey Hepburn's
29:59
Speaker 1: final film was it because she was darling in it?
30:03
Speaker 1: She was, she was pretty till the very end. Is
30:06
Speaker 1: that it? That is it? Okay? If you want to
30:08
Speaker 1: know more about forest fires, you should go into the
30:11
Speaker 1: beloved venerable website that we work for, how stuff works
30:15
Speaker 1: dot com and type in wildfires and we have it
30:19
Speaker 1: as one word, right yes uh. And if you type
30:23
Speaker 1: an ends, canna bring up a very cool article with
30:24
Speaker 1: some really great photography to um. I think the page
30:28
Speaker 1: one or page zero pick is just awesome looking. Um.
30:33
Speaker 1: And since I said handy search far, that means it's
30:36
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. It's not. Oh yeah, that's right.
30:41
Speaker 1: I don't have a listener mail for this one. Josh,
30:43
Speaker 1: and I was trying to think of what we could
30:44
Speaker 1: do instead. Would you come up with. Well, I thought
30:46
Speaker 1: about a call to action saying that you know, that
30:48
Speaker 1: would be great if you could go to iTunes and
30:50
Speaker 1: leave us a rating and a review, because are bad.
30:53
Speaker 1: Some people hate it when we do that, you know,
30:56
Speaker 1: like we're just begging for it or whatever. It's beats
30:58
Speaker 1: a pledge drive. Yes, it does, Chuck. Do we ask
31:03
Speaker 1: that much from you guys? Really? No? So so so.
31:08
Speaker 1: Actually we finally worked that out. Call to action or
31:11
Speaker 1: how about some love for Jerry via email too to
31:13
Speaker 1: be great? Oh that's nice. Some Jerry questions or both.
31:17
Speaker 1: We'll tell you all about Jerry. Yeah, ask us really
31:19
Speaker 1: personal questions about our life answer and totally we've just
31:22
Speaker 1: been waiting for everyone to ask Yeah. Um, you can
31:26
Speaker 1: ask those questions all sorts of ways. Um. First, if
31:30
Speaker 1: you want to go give us a rating a review
31:32
Speaker 1: on iTunes, that's very nice, if you thank you. Um.
31:34
Speaker 1: But if you want to ask us a question about Jerry,
31:37
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us. We have our own Twitter
31:40
Speaker 1: feed up to fifteen thousand followers. Did you know that? Yes,
31:43
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast one word um. And then
31:47
Speaker 1: of course we have our great Facebook page. Um, that's
31:51
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know, And you
31:54
Speaker 1: can send us a regular old email and you can
31:57
Speaker 1: listen to us on WFMU if you're in New York
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Speaker 1: or New Jersey. Uh ninety one point one Friday's between
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32:09
Speaker 1: Valie Hudson Valley. Um and and is that not New York,
32:15
Speaker 1: New York's down the Hudson Valley. Where's the Hudson New
32:17
Speaker 1: York State? So that's up stick? Is that where Albany
32:21
Speaker 1: is to keep hearing like everybody in law in order
32:23
Speaker 1: to talk about when they mentioned the governor huh um
32:27
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32:29
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more
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