Hot, burning and destructive.
- A bushfire is an out of control fire, which may have been deliberately lit, accidentally lit, or started by a natural cause.
- Other names for bushfires are wildfires, brush fires, forest fires, desert fires, grass fires, hill fires, vegetation fires and veldfires.
- Bushfires occur on every continent except Antarctica.
- In the United States of America, 60,000 – 80,000 bushfires typically occur every year.
- The major natural bushfire starters are lightning, volcanic eruptions, rockfall sparks or, plainly, self heating.
Bushfire
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- Bushfires are fuelled from vegetation which could be above or below the surface.
- People help prevent bushfires spreading by clearing debris and vegetation. A common form of clearing is back burning, where a controlled fire is burnt towards the fire threat to reduce the fuel load.
- The smoke from bushfires normally contain carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and formaldehyde.
- According to the Inquirer News, bushfires kill 339,000 people every year.
- The worst bushfire recorded in the last 150 years was the Peshtigo fire in Wisconsin and Michigan in the US, killing at least 1200 people.
