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by hn_throwaway_99
522 days ago
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Yes, wildfires get incredibly hot. But the fires essentially always travel by embers or direct contact with fire - your comments about IR radiation seem to imply that IR alone will cause ignition, which is rarely if ever the case. Here is a story about a bunch of people who survived the Camp fire in Paradise, CA, surrounded by the raging inferno, by staying in the middle of a parking lot: https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/wildland/news/... |
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However, in incidents like e.g. the Fort McMurray fire (Alberta, 2016), this is precisely what happens. One property with a heavy fuel load fanned by strong winds (i.e. plentiful O2 supply) gets hot enough that it causes ignition in a neighboring exposure.
In Ft. McMurray, there were documented cases of an entire 4+ bedroom house being reduced to ash in roughly 5 minutes. The heat generated by that process is easily sufficient to cause ignition in buildings <typical suburban layout> apart.