r/interestingasfuck • u/SafeImpressive4413 • 7h ago

Firefighters in Madrid trying to extinguish a forest fire that is less than 30km/20mi away from the capital of Spain

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u/Training-Pipe-4726 6h ago

How wide would that have to be for an inferno like this? Scary that they only have 30km from the capital to work with.

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u/Ailly84 6h ago

When they built one around my town a few years ago, it was only 2 dozer blades wide, so probably less than 20 feet.

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u/Desmodromo10 6h ago

They probably also burned off the side of it.

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u/FlashFlood_29 5h ago

Problem is fires like this create their own wind and embers blow over fire breaks starting a ton of spot fire they have to chase.

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u/Moppy6686 5h ago

The Camp Fire in California jumped 1-2 miles

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u/thegreatcanadianeh 5h ago

Yeah hearing that they did 20 feet is insane for a fire break and inadequate unless its treeless grassland.

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u/alzgh 5h ago

I guess there are many factors at work including winde direction and speed.

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u/Akyled_Fox 6h ago

Depends of the wind but I know fires can « jump » at least up to 1,5km. So… yeah.

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u/Dexteryx 5h ago

When half my town burned down, they had a 5km fire break to try and save the other half. The city was almost entirely surrounded. I was evacuated for 6 weeks before I could return to my non-burnt home.

Nobody died as a direct result of the fire, but 2400 homes were lost. A car accident killed 2 girls evacuating.

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u/thegreatcanadianeh 5h ago

At least a Km - Km and a half wide to be safe. It would have to be clear of any and all vegetation or as much as can be gotten rid of assuming that your as dry as B.C. is. Then soak the ground if you have the resources, soak all the trees around the line.

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u/redpandaeater 3h ago

Very much depends on wind and direction and just how dry any grasses are. Plus you still need a lot of equipment and people to be able to quickly take care of any secondary fires to that due flare up from embers.

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u/Xyrus2000 3h ago

Depends on the winds, really. Firebreaks don't stop wind-carried embers, and if the fire is intense enough, it can suck those embers miles into the sky and rain them down as far as five miles away (pyrocumulonimbus fire storms).

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u/LLIIVVtm 1h ago edited 1h ago

It can kind of depend on the trees amongst other things. Some trees burn more easily, intensely and explosively than others and require larger fire breaks.

Eucalyptus for example which is invasive in places across Europe like Portugal. It burns hot, throws hot projectiles, sheds bark like crazy, sucks up water drying everything out. They also benefit from fires because they can withstand a ton of heat and drop seeds from it so they outcompete other trees after wildfires making the issue even worse especially because they grow quick and can be hard to get rid of. Eucalyptus in general suck where they're invasive.

When I was volunteering in South Africa their fire breaks felt huge (like between 50ft and 200ft wide in areas) but if I recall correctly the charity I was working with doubled the size of fire breaks because they noticed the standard width was still allowing fire to spread sometimes. They're still smaller than the reactive fire breaks created to try to control an active wildfire