What is the meaning of "fighting fire with fire" in forest fire rescue? Won't it make the fire bigger?

On May 12, 2023, the Science Popularization China Starry Sky Forum, with the theme of "Scientific Disaster Prevention and Mitigation to Protect People's Safety", invited 5 experts from the field of disaster prevention, mitigation and relief to guide the public to improve their awareness of risk prevention and control through explaining scientific knowledge about disasters and popularizing common sense about emergency risk avoidance, push emergency management checkpoints forward, focus on preventing safety risks at the source, and fundamentally eliminate potential safety hazards.

Zhou Junliang, emergency command specialist and senior engineer of the Ministry of Emergency Management, gave a speech: "How much knowledge is needed to prevent forest fires"

The following is an excerpt from Zhou Junliang’s speech:

Major wildfires refer to large-scale forest fires. They are listed as one of the eight major natural disasters in the world by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and are a common challenge facing human society.

Even in the 21st century, large-scale forest fires are still one of the major natural disasters in our country. According to statistics, in the second decade of this century alone, the total number of casualties caused by forest fires in our country reached 607, with more than 20 people dying in forest fires every year.

Photo courtesy: Zhou Junliang

We often see in the news that in order to put out a fire, firefighters use helicopters and sometimes even "fight fire with fire". What are these things about?

01

Why are helicopters used to fight fires?

Helicopters have many uses in firefighting:

One is to observe the fire scene from the air and spray water through an aerial bucket , and also to sprinkle some dry powder and chemical agents to extinguish the fire. This method is more commonly used in fires in the south, because fires in the south are generally not very large and can be extinguished by spraying water.

Another way is to use helicopter landing . The forest areas in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia are relatively large, and one or two buckets of water are not enough to deal with the problem. What should we do? There is a method called "airborne firefighting", which is to transport firefighting personnel to the fire scene to deploy and extinguish the fire from the air.

02

How to set up isolation belt?

What is “fighting fire with fire”?

If the fire area is too large or it is very difficult to extinguish, we will set up an isolation zone around it and "draw a circle", just like the circle that Sun Wukong drew for Tang Monk in "Journey to the West".

The existing roads, rivers, farmlands and some pre-set isolation belts were connected to form a belt around the fire site. Once a big fire came, the fire fighters would put it out and contain it in the isolation belt.

There are many ways to open isolation zones, one of which is to use a bulldozer. But if the mountain is too high for an excavator or bulldozer to get up, you can only rely on a bucket to spray water in the air to suppress the fire and slow down the spread of the fire.

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Another method is to fight fire with fire . This is actually a way to set up a quarantine zone.

If you are worried that the fire will break through the 3-meter-wide and 5-meter-wide isolation belts that have been set up, just before the fire comes over, rely on this isolation belt and burn the fire in step by step. The purpose of burning is to make the fire head collapse, and at the same time, by burning the fire into the fire scene, burn out the isolation belt.

The method of "fighting fire with fire" needs to be done by professional technicians. Fire prevention scientists will design a model of fire occurrence, including what kind of combustibles, what kind of terrain, what kind of wind speed and direction, what kind of temperature, how long it will take for the fire to spread and how far it will spread, and set up isolation zones according to the calculated distances.

03

When a forest fire occurs, what can ordinary people do?

From the public's perspective, once a forest fire occurs, call the police in time and dial 12119 .

We must start with ourselves, start now, educate ourselves and those around us, manage fire sources, and not bring fire sources into forests and grasslands. Together, we will protect the earth and our beautiful home.