SeanBailey

ARSC10

Dr.Buxton

December5, 2007

ForestFires!

Imaginethis; the day is just like any typical southern Californian August day,absolutely gorgeous out and warm.You?re in San Diego, and couldn?t be happier.There hasn?t been a rainfall in a while, so some of theforests are drying out, but that?s common for this time of year.You wake up and flip on the television,see what the Padres game ended up being last night.All of a sudden, there is an emergency on the television,and you are informed of raging forest fires ravaging the area.What do you do?

SouthernCalifornia and the western United States are known for having terriblewildfires each year.For millionsof people, this scenario is half expected and prepared for each year.What are some of the steps you can takein order to make sure you don?t burn alive during a forest fire?Read along and you shall indeed findout.

Thefirst thing to know is, what in tarnation is a forest fire?Well, a forest fire is a fire thathappens in a forest.What happensis that periods of drought dry up the forests, and the trees are usuallyignited by either lightning, human accidents, or even those damned arsons.With a dry forest, the fire is free tospread as fast as it pleases, causing utter devastation to the flora and fauna,slaughtering innocent animals and sometimes humans.Now, this sounds absolutely terrible, and by golly, believeyou me it is, but this is just a cycle of nature.The problem with forest fires too are that they cause utterdevastation to the forest, and it takes years for the animal and plant kingdomsto repair from the scar that the world evoked upon this beast.

Wait,you have a question?What?s thatyou ask?What is the differencebetween forest fires and grass fires you ask?Why gee wilikers, that?s a splendiferous question, and Iwould absolutely love to answer it.You actually read my mind!I was just about to answer that!Now, a grass fire is simply a fire that happens on grass.That?s it!Enough with the jokes though, now it?s time to getserious.What happens again isthat the grass dries out, and becomes very flammable (1).In the same way that a forest fire maycome into existence through lightning, accidents, or arsons, the same is heldtrue with grass fires.Grass firesdo not burn as long as forest fires do, but they are still quite serious.Again, the common place for these typesof occurrences to occur are out west, where droughts are common.If you have not noticed this yet, thesedroughts are very deadly for the area and we should do our best to try andsolve them or else more problems like this will occur and the entire area willbe devastated and keep burning and burning and burning, killing more animalsand plants and people.

Now,how do firefighters fight these types of fires that they are paid tofight?With water of course!Haha, no, I kid once more.In all seriousness, the fighting offires by these firefighters helps prevent fires from spreading throughout therest of the area.One such waythis occurs is the typical pile up of people into a fire truck and drive out tothe fire, ready to do battle with the fire.They use obviously much more water than typical house fireswould require to quench the thirst of the flames, yet all that water is worthit in my humble opinion.Anotherway that these heroes fight the fires as firefighters are the incredibly bravesmokejumpers and other crazy people who actually parachute or repel into a smallisolated area of the fire and try to suppress it on their own.Now me, I would never be able to dothis due to my fear of heights and jumping, as well as fire.With these people attempting tosuppress the fires, they help prevent the fires from spreading throughout therest of the area and causing more harm and damage to people and animals, asanimals are not meant to be lit on fire.One last way for fires to be fought by firefighters within this fireprone area in which fire fighting by firefighters is necessary is by the use ofhelicopters (2).No, thehelicopters do not shoot at the fire, as that would not be helpful in the fightagainst the fire by the firefighters.They instead fly over the fires and drop a flame retardant over the topof the fire, hopefully successfully retarding the fire.This is much more economic and moreingenious than flying over and dumping buckets of water on top of the fire.

AlrightDr. Buxton, now the real fun begins.In this section of my lab report, I will discuss how these ferocious,ravaging, hot, terrible, atrocious, violent, mean, red, orange, yellow, blue,purplety, large, warm, raging fires form.During the summer and fall months, droughts tend to occur.These droughts are caused by a lack ofrainfall within the area for a period of time.When these droughts occur, the plants start to dry out, andbecome very flammable.People maystart the fire, or the gas released by the trees called ethylene?which alsohappens to be very, very, extremely flammable?is heated up and causes theforest fires to occur (2).Now,these fires are part of the ecosystem, and are definitely needed to occur, butnot on such a drastic scale.Whatthe United States Forest Service has done recently is allowed controlled firesto burn out the underbrush, allowing trees to grow healthily and strong whilstin the wilderness while allowing the natural fires to occur.These underbrush fires also clear outareas for the wildlife to live underneath too, again helping better the life ofthe animals.With room to move andnot being on fire, the animals are living the dream that they have alwayswished to live, and life goes on with all them little woodland critters.

Weare now on page four of this ridiculous lab report, and I am running out ofideas for which to construct my paper with.