Parts of a Fire
The total distance around the fire.
What is Fire Perimeter?
Involves firefighters and equipment working directly on the fire's edge or perimeter to contain and extinguish the flames.
What is Direct Attack?
Burns with a low flame and spreads slowly.
What is Creeping?
Burn the hottest and fastest of all the fuel types.
What is Grass?
A long narrow elevation of land, a steep slope or a similar range of hills or mountains. Offers a good place to assist in containing a fire.
What is Ridge?
The part of a wildland fire with the greatest forward rate of spread. Often burns intensely and may move with alarming speed.
What is the Head?
Establishing control lines at a distance from the fire's edge, often using natural or constructed barriers, and then burning out the fuel between the line and the fire to contain it.
What is Indirect Attack?
Spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire carrying aloft smoke, debris and flame.
What is Fire Whirl?
Shrub
Fire starting near the base can react similar to a fire in a wood burning stove or fireplace. Wind drawn in from the bottom create upslope dafts.
What is Box Canyon?
The sides of a fire, roughly parallel to the main direction of the fire spread. Often referred to left or right.
What is Flanks?
This phase marks the final extinguishing of a fire after it has been completely surrounded by control lines.
What is Mop-up?
Fire that moves away from the head, downhill or against the wind.
Most dominant in mountainous topography. Provides fuel for ground fire. Small matter such as needles, leaves twigs and other natural debris found on the ground.
What is Timber Litter?
A steep V- shaped drainage.
What is Chutes?
The end of the fire opposite from the head. The back of the fire, relatively close to the origin.
What is Heel?
The point in time when the perimeter spread of a wildland fire has been halted and can reasonably be expected to hold under foreseeable conditions.
What is Control Line?
Fire ignites the crown of trees, then returns to the surface fuels.
What is Torching?
Debris left after natural events or human activities: logging, pruning, thinning, shrub cutting, wind, fire, etc.
What is Slash-Blowdown?
Common name for the depression between two adjacent hilltops.
What is Saddles?
Long, narrow strips of fire that extend from the main body of a fire.
What is Finger?
A strategic, advantageous location, typically a natural barrier to fire spread, from which to start constructing a fireline, minimizing the risk of being outflanked by the fire.
What is Anchor point?
The part of the fire within which continuous flaming combustion is taking place, the leading edge of the fire.
What is Flaming Front?
Man made fuel sources: waste, houses, above ground oil and natural gas pipelines, etc.
What is Artificial?
Natural or artificial topographic incline.
What is Slope?