How do firefighters determine containment

Containment Versus Control. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group defines control of a fire as: The completion of control line around a fire, any spot fires therefrom, and any interior islands to be saved; burned out any unburned area adjacent to the fire side of the control lines; and cool down all hotspots that are immediate threats to the control line, until the lines can reasonably be expected to hold under the foreseeable conditions.

The public is often used to seeing containment increase continually as the fire progresses. Sometimes we get asked why containment slows on certain fires, especially when a fire has not seen growth in days. With the extreme conditions firefighters are more often dealing with, fire managers are taking extra precautions before changing a portion of the line to contained.

Another reason is that fires burn in mountains in inaccessible terrain. In those areas it is difficult to establish a control line to use for adding to containment. For example the at the time most expensive fire in CA history, the Soberanes Fire , took 12 weeks to officially be called contained. Fire Fighting Wildfire No Comments. Leave a Reply Cancel Reply You must be logged in to post a comment.

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The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. But generally, as firefighters gain more control of the fire — stopping its spread — the containment percentage will rise, sometimes very quickly in one day.

Containment will come first, followed by control days, weeks or even months later. Not until rain pours down on a fire will it be declared out, Sherwin said. By Brian Rokos brokos scng. More in Crime and Public Safety.